Your legal rights and responsibilities
Back to Topic
Click to Print
Useful Websites
Glossary Term Selection
Who’s in charge?
There’s no law that says you have to have a funeral.
But there is a law that says you must dispose of the body of the person who has died ‘by burial, cremation or any other means’ (Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953).
The law views a dead body as a potential health hazard and it enables one or more people to take possession of a dead body for the sole purpose of disposing of it. Note that word ‘possession’. Possessing a dead body is not the same as owning it. No one owns a dead body. No one owns a living body, either. You do not own your own body; you are not allowed to offer your organs for sale.
Certain people have a prior right to possess a dead body so long as they undertake to dispose of it. If you have the right to take possession of a dead body then you have the right do so at once without having to produce any documentation.
What does this mean?
The person with the right to possess the body has the right to take possession as soon as death happ...
Want to see the rest of this article?
Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?
- Useful related articles
- Video and multimedia references
- Statistical information and reference material
- Glossary of terms
- Key Facts and figures
- Related assignments
- Resource material and websites
