In your response regarding cemetery rights and priviledges.
I need to correct you on one very important point.
Cemeteries in many states do not actually have to seek permission to move a body, if they can prove they needed to correct a problem, and contacting the family wouldn’t be prudent at the time.
This has caused all manner of problems. Imagine being a family and arriving at the cemetery to find removal of your loved ones casket taking place.
I am working toward the end with the government/s to change the verbage in the law that will require the proper permits before ANY excavation can take place in the space of an existing burial.
Some states, like Oklahoma, require a disinterment permit from the State Health Department, for even so much as an exploratory excavation. Most states do not have this level of regulation or compliance. Many states don’t even require cause of death be reported prior to disinterment. What a health risk!
Thank you. I just wanted to point out this incorrect answer in your posting.
Welcome to the SDMB rsixftunder. I’ve moved this post to the Comments on Staff Reports forum, because it’s not one of Cecil’s columns, but a staff report that I wrote. Also, it’s customary to include a link to the staff report in question, which I’ll do: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcemeteryrights.html
I’m aware of some cases where bodies have been moved with perfunctory notice to family members, or by court order without notice to family members. I’m not sure I see what you are talking about for New Mexico, though. Here’s the statute that I see:
My grandmother had two siblings who died in childhood ca. 1910-1920 and were buried in a small cemetery near her birthplace. At the time the cemetery was on dry land not very close to any major body of water, but the formation of Lake Martin (at that time the largest man-made lake in the nation [but now several spaces down the list]) in the 1930s literally converted the cemetery from pastureland to lakefront. About 10 years ago or so I got a phone call that the lake was reclaiming a part of the cemetery and was causing some sinking and that several graves needed to be moved. As the only relative of my grandmother’s that they were able to find (actually they called my mother but as she was not a blood relative it fell to me) they needed to know what I wanted done with the remains, and they stated they would pay for new coffins and to move the headstones.
Since they died 50 years before I was born and 10 years before my father was even born I of course had no great emotional attachment to their remains (or anybody else’s- I don’t even visit my mother’s grave= I’m a huge believer in cremation as I think inhumation is up there with augury and animal sacrifice as a barbaric ritual) and I basically told them whatever they wanted to do was absolutely fine, I’d sign anything if they needed it signed so long as there was a clear “no financial liability” waiver, etc… Out of curiosity I asked them what they’d have done had they not found me (and that family has largely died out) and they said the bodies would have been placed in a county owned cemetery in numbered plots (basically the county Potter’s Field) and the headstones stored in a county warehouse until they were claimed, and if they were never claimed then they’d remain there indefinitely or until the cemetery had to be closed or the warehouse ran out of space, and they said that was exactly the case with a few graves from this cemetery that needed moving- the families had died out or nobody had any idea who the relatives were and the county lacked the resources to hire an investigator. They also said, I remember, that there have been lawsuits over these things, even when as in this case it was a distant relative the “next of kin” had never even met, which is why they were calling me and why they sent me a form to sign and notarize.
I considered going to watch the exhumation just as a matter of curiosity- what condition is the coffin in? Was anything buried with them? etc., but they didn’t know the exact date since I’d waived a ceremony and my work schedule was hectic at the time.
There’s a very old cemetery in Montgomery that has some exposed graves. For a while kids went through some of the worse condition ones as a skull was the ultimate find. The city had investigators working quite some while to find the heirs before cleaning up those graves (some of which were antebellum) and signs were posted that anybody interfering with a grave in the meantime would face mandatory jailtime regardless of their age.