Family Burial Dispute Case Study

Our client’s dad died in hospital in 2022 without leaving a will. He left four adult children. The two eldest, A and B, initially agreed to organise the funeral, but no arrangements were made. Four years later, the father remains unburied, leaving our client and the rest of the family in a distressing and unresolved position. They cannot move on.

Context

Our client wants to arrange his father’s funeral in London where he had lived and worked over the last 40 years. He is concerned that his siblings’ inaction, combined with threats to repatriate the deceased to Trinidad, prevents his father’s final wishes from being honoured. Whilst alive, he never expressed a wish to be buried in Trinidad.

With years of delay and mounting family tension, urgent action is required to ensure the deceased can be laid to rest with dignity and the funeral can proceed.

Challenge

The client faced significant delays in arranging the funeral due to his siblings’ lack of co-operation. Past threats of violence from A made direct negotiation unsafe, and the deceased remained in the funeral director’s care. Our role was to protect the client’s legal rights, provide a clear pathway for action and ensure the funeral could proceed with dignity.

Solution

We contacted the funeral director to confirm the deceased would not be moved until the dispute was resolved.

We then sent a letter of claim to A and B, setting out that our client wanted to organise the funeral himself due to delays and sought their appointment as the deceased’s Personal Representative (PR).

Unfortunately, the siblings have not engaged meaningfully with us. They suggested mediation, but given the past threats of violence and the fact that they are unrepresented, we did not consider this safe or productive. They indicated they were instructing a solicitor, but no formal instruction has materialised in over seven months.