From Church of the Holy Spirit of Wayland v. Heinrich, decided Thursday by the Massachusetts Appeals Court:
The controversy before us comes down to this: may cremated human remains that are buried in a churchyard [pursuant to an agreement for the sale of burial lots] be disinterred and moved elsewhere [when the parish is closed and the church property is sold] against the wishes of the families of the deceased? The trial court judge ruled that, as a matter of law, the church that established the churchyard retained the unilateral right to relocate the remains. As explained below, we conclude that the interred remains retain protection based on principles of contract, property, and trust law. Accordingly, we reverse and remand….
[W]e … hold that in the absence of a governing statute, common law trust principles apply to the disinterment of human remains from a dedicated burial ground until the families of the deceased have abandoned the remains or the burial ground is no longer recognizable as such….
The churches argue that even if the parish did not retain a unilateral right to disinter the remains, they have shown that disinterment is warranted by a material change in circumstances. We assume arguendo that the churches are correct that the owner of a burial ground could argue that unforeseeable changed circumstances render it no longer possible to fulfill the purposes that trust principles served to protect….
[But] we conclude that the churches have not met, and cannot meet, that burden here. The changed circumstances on which the churches rely are the closing of the parish and the sale of the property…. [T]he closing of the parish was a foreseeable voluntary act, not some exogenous development such as the opening of a sink hole. The churches have not demonstrated how the closing of the parish and sale of the property rendered it impossible to fulfill the families' interest in having their loved ones' remains stay where they had been laid to rest, in the location where all contracting parties had agreed they would lie in perpetuity….
