Estate Planning

Macabre gap in New Zealand law?

By Hull & Hull LLP

"It's unacceptable to the average person that you can just turn up with a bunch of heavies and steal the coffin."

Coen brothers?  Nope.  No, not Tim Burton either.  In fact, this is a statement put forth by an MP in New Zealand after the third case of body snatching in less than a year. 

As reported in the BBC news yesterday, the body of a 76-yr old woman was hijacked right out of the back of the hearse by four carloads of people including her estranged daughter.  The bizarre, but not unprecedented, scene sparked a bitter family row over the deceased's last wishes with respect to her funeral arrangements.  The deceased had been married to a Maori man but separated from him in the 1970s.  Clashes over where people are buried are apparently not uncommon in Maori society, particularly in marriages of mixed descent (e.g. Maori and European).

Incredibly, a spokesman for police national headquarters said they had limited power to intervene: "Body snatching is not against the law" since, in contrast to Ontario, a body cannot be legally owned in New Zealand.  The recent cluster of body snatching cases may lead to an overhaul of New Zealand law regarding who owns a body.

David M. Smith

Full post as published by Toronto Estate Law Blog on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).