What’s the least expensive way to dispose of a human body that is allowed by law?
Let’s say everyone involved is an American and this actually does have to be legal, as opposed to falling into the category “It’s illegal but nobody cares.”
How does it change if a person died at a hospital as opposed to at home?
There are probably varying state laws regarding disposal of bodies. If one of them allows a funeral pyre for instance, that could cost less than the ones requiring you to purchase a waterproof casket even if you bury the deceased in your backyard.
Donating your body to science is a real option. My mother-in-law wanted this done. I do not recall the mechanics of matching up with an organization that wanted the body, but there was a research group studying the condition she died from. They arranged to transport the body to their location, sliced up her brain, cremated the rest and sent us a nice urn with her ashes. We paid nothing.
Don’t get too excited over burying your mother-in-law in your back yard. Most people live in tidy little subdivisions, and there are laws SOMEPLACE (city, county, municipal) or restrictions recorded with the tract map, or a Codes, Covenants and Restrictions (CCR) with a Homeowners’ Association that forbid it.
Depending on the laws of the state you’re in, you can’t even dump the old lady’s ashes in the rosebushes in the back yard.
We’ve got 36 acres in NE AZ, and we’ve heard it IS legal to plant someone on our piece of Heaven. Hubster and I plan on doing the research and getting the permits and whatever else we must do so that can be our final resting place.
For most people, the least expensive way is cremation.
There are still folks like me, though, who are creeped out completely by the thought of being immolated.
~VOW
Zombies will walk out on their own power. No disposal necessary.
My parents are both doing this. They are going to be dissected by medical students.
I think this is about as cheap (for the estate) as can be managed.
Regards,
Shodan
Donating to science does indeed sound like the cheapest option.
If someone dies at a hospital and the family refuses to claim the body, what happens? Is that something the hospital could reasonably sue them over?
I suppose that would depend on whether any other family member had liability for the hospital bills before the death. I expect any charges the hospital incurred with the body would just be tacked on to the rest of the bill. If they can sue somebody for the rest of the bill, they can sue the same person costs of disposing of the body. They can’t just pick a relative and make that relative liable, though.
As the the OP – cheapest to who? Cheapest to your estate? To your family? To society?
I heard on plenty of cop shows that family members don’t have to claim a body from the morgue, and the city/county/state? will bury the body in a “Potter’s Field”. That cost is presumably spread among thousands or millions of taxpayers, which would surely make the cost to any individual the cheapest. But whether the cost of a burial like that is cheaper in absolute terms than cremation, I couldn’t tell you.
Yes, but there’s an opportunity cost: collapse of civilization, etc.
One would expect that this would simply all accrue as a debt against the estate of the deceased. Like any other debt it would need to be settled before disbursement of any residual assets to those that inherit.
In some jurisdictions unclaimed bodies may be given to local medical schools or mortuary schools. Alot of places also cremate (individually) indigent bodies before burying the remains (in groups). In NYC they’re buried (intact) in mass graves on Hart Island by jail inmates. I suspect using prisoners to dig the graves in SOP almost everywhere.
The estate and the family.
I also didn’t realize potter’s fields were still in existence in this country.
Serious question. Suppose one were to cook and eat the corpse, would this be illegal in most jurisdictions?
They gotta do something with unclaimed bodies. Every once in a while they find bodies they can’t even identify, so there’s not much other choice.
As an aside, perhaps you’ve seen the recent news stories about how Arlington Cenetary was treating some soldier’s remains – cremating them and dumping them into a landfill. Actually, this may apply to only unidentified body parts – I haven’t been following the story that closely myself.
I don’t think so, but no way am I going to google that.
Who are you and what is your relationship to the corpse? There have been a couple threads about ownership of corpses, and it’s an exceedingly gray legal area. I have also heard of such crimes as “improper disposal of a corpse” and “desecration of a corpse”. If you’re in the US, your state will have its own set of rules about property AND corpses. Property rights are defined state by state in the US.
It was Dover Airforce Base.
You are correct. I was confusing the soldiers’ bodies scandals.
Arlington Cemetery lost hundreds of soldiers bodies, and as far as is known didn’t dump them in landfills. On the minus side, they lost entire corpses, not just bits and pieces.
In 1993, in the state of West Virginia, we actually looked into this to bury my grandfather on a piece of rural property that we owned. The answer: Just dig a hole. YMMV and state and local laws may differ.
*We ended up burying him in a commercial cemetery because my grandmother didn’t want to be buried there and wanted to be beside him.