What Makes a Cemetary By Law?

What Makes a Cemetary By Law?

What Makes a Cemetary By Law?

What Makes a Cemetary By Law?

A cemetery, generally synonymous with the words "graveyard," "burial place," or "burying ground," has occasionallybeen defined as a place where six or more human bodies areburied. The cemetery is a place of burial differing from achurchyard by its locality and incidence, and generally isreferred to or defined as a place where dead bodies of humanbeings are buried, in an area of ground set apart for the burialof the dead and designated either by public authority, privateenterprise, or in the case of family cemeteries by personsrelated by blood or marriage. If ground has been set apart forburial, it may be a "cemetery" or "burial ground," as a matterof law, even though there have been no actual interments orburials, as long as some steps have been taken toward ready ing the land for burial purposes.

Cemeteries are subject to reasonable public regulationunder both the police powers of the state, the health regulations, and the elements of public safety and decency. Theseconsiderations also require that there be some statutory oradministrative controls, or both, over places of burial as wellas over funerals and the funeral industry.

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In addition, the state, through the agency of the attorney general and through the department of state and its corporation laws, controls cemeteries organized for private profit.Cemeteries which are nonprofit organizations are regulatedunder the laws governing charities and eleemosynary institu tions and establishments. The powers of the Federal Government or of a state or political subdivision in the realm ofeminent domain also apply to cemeteries.

As in England, the traditional American cemetery was the burial place in the churchyard. Here, in the usual form oforganization, lots or plots were not sold to individuals orfamilies, and burial was reserved for members of the church,parish, or congregation and their families. The "graveyard"usually lay within the "glebe" or church grounds, and wasoperated and regarded as a private cemetery, consisting of consecrated ground. The right secured by a person, even whenburial rights or lots hi a church cemetery are sold for aconsideration, is merely an easement or license to bury in the space alloted, and is not a legal title to the land which is to beused. Rather than a fee or absolute ownership of real property, it is more analogous to the right of a pew holder in achurch. The church corporation usually restricts the right ofburial to adherents of the sect or denomination involved,although many cemeteries are now operated for and opened tothe general public, such as the Rock Creek Church Cemeteryin Washington, D.C. However, this form of cemetery organi zation, operated by a specific church and open to the general public has not figured too prominently in the development of American cemetery law.

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