Cremains Everywhere, Oh My!

In a story most appropriate for Halloween, Douglas Belkin reports in Abandoned cremains piling up at funeral homes, Boston Globe, Oct. 31, 2005, that

[t]ens of thousands of abandoned cremains are piling up in funeral home storage closets, basements, and utility rooms nationwide. Some funeral directors send out annual letters pleading for the next of kin to pick them up. Many return unopened.

What can funeral directors do? If they pay for burial themselves, costs could quickly run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and if they dispose of them without permission, they might be sued. Even with some state guidelines, no one wants to tell a long-lost relative that grandpa's ashes are gone.

Some of the cremains have been stored for over 50 years!

Special thanks to Assistant Professor Alyssa A. DiRusso of the Cumberland School of Law for bringing this article to my attention.