Short Stuff: Backyard Burials

Time was that you’d bury a deceased relative in your yard; now it’s just weird. But it’s still legal – and if you want to do it, here’s how!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
There's Jerry. This is short Stuff. Getty up. So a
while back we did a podcast. Um, I'm not even
sure which one it was, but you said that your
ultimate wish was to be Uh was it fired from
a cannon? Yeah? Yeah, that's like so like yesterday's news.

(00:26):
Then yeah, what's your current plan? Um? I actually am
still in the process of figuring that out. Again. I
am trying to figure out just how much or what
parts of my body might be donated to science, uh
if any I've kind of been creeped out by a
lot of the stories where it's like we found a

(00:47):
head in the woods and it was clearly surgically removed
and I guess the people who it was donated too
didn't need it anymore, so they just dumped it in
the woods kind of stuff, right, And you don't want
to one day become a soccer ball for a wildlife.
But the weird thing is is like when I read
about stuff like what we're about to talk about, I'm like, well,
it doesn't matter if this land gets subdivided a hundred

(01:07):
years from now and somebody accidentally digs up the grave.
Who cares? So it's weird, like part of me is
very precious about what happens to me after I die,
and another part of me is like, it does not matter. Yeah,
I'm in that camp still. I I have an alarming
amount of um or a lack of reverence for human

(01:27):
corpse after they're they're gone. I know I've seen you
p on one before. Now I wouldn't do that, but
it just I don't know, man, I just think that
once you're gone, you're gone, So you know, burn me up,
ash me up, spread me around someplace. I liked cut
you into lines and snort you up. I did bury

(01:48):
my cat Lauren in the backyard, but all of our
other animals have been cremated. And Emily didn't love the
idea of bearing Lauren, but she was like, he's your cat.
You do what you want, and I like, I like
him being out there. Yeah, I'm with you. So there's
really no beef that you're gonna get from anybody for
burying Lauren in the backyard. And by the way, r
I p Laurent. He was one of the great ones.

(02:08):
But um if Laurent had been say your father for
your brother or something like that. Let's go with my brother. Okay,
if Lauren had been your brother, if Lauren was Scott,
and you tried to bury Scott in your yard, but
you would have probably run into some issues with the authorities.
At the very least, your neighbors would have been rather

(02:29):
upset with you, and they could have called the cops
on you, and the cops would have been like, dig
your brother up, and that would be that. And I'd
dig up Laurn and be like here he is, right,
Blio switcher too. Yeah, Well, this is definitely an old
prairie kind of thing, the idea of bearing relatives on
your land. Um, and it is still really very much

(02:51):
legal in a lot of states. California won't let you
because I guess the real estate is just super valuable
in that. They said that are concerns that in the future,
like you were talking about, if they subdivide their land
to sell parcels and plots, that someone might be disturbed. Uh.
Washington State, Indiana and Washington d C. Is on record

(03:13):
is just being like there's no room. Sorry, right, barrier
dead in Virginia probably so right sore so that, but
anywhere else you can if you own enough land bury
anybody you want to on your land, especially a family member.
I think that probably greases the wheels a little more
if you're actually a blood relative or relative by marriage

(03:34):
of them. But there are some rules that you have
to follow no matter what. But one of the first
questions you want to ask yourself before you actually do
this is do I really want to do this? Because
if you're not planning on, you know, spending your your
dying days on this piece of property and handing it
down to your your kid who wants that property, there's

(03:55):
a good chance you might want to sell that property
in the future, and it may it may affect the
resale of that house and property knowing that there's a
dead body buried in what's now a cemetery on your land. Yeah.
Like I got to give my house one day to
my daughter and she's like, uh, gross, Uncle Scott and
Laurnner back there right, No thanks, And why did you

(04:17):
make them share the same great? Yeah, it's under the
bird bath, it really is. Um. So if you were
going to do this, uh, And we'll get into the
nitpicky details after the break, but there are definitely going
to be nitpicky details. You can't just say, well, it's
legal in my state. Here we go, give me a shouble. Um.

(04:38):
There are rules and regulations depending on the state and
the county or the district that you're in. Um, they're
definitely gonna be setbacks, like you can't bury it right
next to your property line or next to a stream
because it's pretty Um, it's gonna have to be well
away from the water table any kind of water, and
any kind of building or adjoining properties. Yeah, which are

(05:00):
I mean, really good things to keep in mind. You
don't want the could ever fouling up the local water
supply basically, so you want to take a break and
then come back and get into the real deeds. Let's
do it. Okay, okay, Chuck. So you've donned your overalls

(05:41):
and taking your shoes off, got a little thing of
grain in your teeth, and you're saying, I'm ready to
bury a loved one. Just give me one first, which
I would not do barefoot. You wouldn't know. So there
there are some states where you can just basically do that.
You can show up at the hospital or the hospit
this or wherever your deceased loved one is and say, hey,

(06:03):
I'm a blood relative. Here's proof, give me the body.
Put the body in your station wagon, and take it
to your house and bury it, depending on the time
frame of when all this happens, and again where you live. Yeah,
I mean, I looked up Georgia just out of curiosity,
and I found a few little interesting tidbits. But one
of them is that. And imagine it's like this. In

(06:24):
a lot of states, embalming is is not a state law. Uh.
Funeral directors do that because they have a body for
you know, a period of time sometimes before the the
actual burial or ceremony or whatever you're gonna do. So
they inbalm for that reason. But you're not required by
law to embalm a body. And if refrigeration is okay,

(06:46):
But even if it's within a really short time span,
you may not even have to refrigerate a body, right.
Typically in states that allow you to take possession of
the body yourself and handle a burial yourself as family,
they usually say about twenty four hours. And actually I
shouldn't even say about within twenty four hours. If you
bury the body within twenty fours you don't have to
embolve it. You don't have to refrigerate it. You can

(07:08):
just again go to the hospital, put in your station wagon,
bring it home and bury it. Probably, just to be smart,
you should dig the whole first, dig the grave first,
have it ready. It's not very cinematic, but sure, no, no, no,
it really is. And now that I think about, usually
dig the hole with the body right there, you know,
right exactly. And also, if you're gonna do this, just

(07:28):
a little tip from us, like make sure that somebody
can see you, and that they see you like nervously
looking over your shoulder a lot. And maybe let's do
this at like dusk or night time. Okay, right exactly. Um,
And here's the thing you're also gonna have to be
You're also gonna have to create an easement for your property.

(07:49):
And that doesn't mean you have to pay like a
a concrete path that leads to the grave, but it
you do have to provide for some sort of future
public access to that grape site, right exactly, like like
it has to be on the d that that is
a possibility. Um. There are some states who say no, no, no,
the funeral directing lobby is far too powerful in our state.

(08:12):
You have to hire a funeral director. UM. It varies
on a spectrum of just how involved the funeral director
has to be. In some states, the funeral director would
have to take possession of the body or would at
least have to file the death certificate. In other states
it's like a total free for all, like you can
handle all that, but you do have to file a
death certificate, which from what this article says, I think
Dave Ru's actually wrote this for on how stuff works. UM.

(08:36):
He says that there are no funeral police, but they
typically want you to um file it within I think
five days of death. Um. But you just have to file.
It's one of those things that has to get done.
So there's a lot of stuff, a lot of responsibility
you take on when a loved one dies and you say,
I'm just gonna bury him in the backyard. Yeah, And

(08:57):
this was another little thing that I would never have
thought about out or considered. Um. This is like a
county clerk, so they have regular business hours. So if
this happens at one on a Friday, you're not gonna
be able to file that certificate until Monday. But if
you're a funeral director, you can party seven, right and

(09:18):
just file it electronically, which I would guess would be
the big advantage of working with the funeral director. And
the best way to do this also if you're gonna
handle it yourself, is to be waiting outside of the
county clerk's office that when they show up the next
morning and be covered in gore and grave dirt, waiting
to file this death's death certificate and they're like, I
gotta give my coffee first, mondays um, So bearing a

(09:43):
body you always hear about, you know, six ft under
that's the sort of rule of thumb. Um. That's actually
not the law in most places, only New Mexico as
far as the United States, where it's legal to bury
about in your backyard require six ft um. New Jersey
is four. It's astounding to me, but most states are
between eighteen and that. But see that to me makes

(10:06):
the most sense. Like six ft you're removing all the
um body from a lot of the aerobic processes that
happen in soil, right, So all you're doing is prolonging
this decomposition where I guess if you're trying to decompose
the body, shallow or grave is a better bet. But

(10:26):
you're you're walking a balancing act here, Like you wanted
to be shallow enough so that the soil is it's
like part of the soil, but not so shallow that say, like, um,
coyote is going to come along and be like, oh yes,
and dig it up because you can smell it. Yeah,
which we have in our neighborhood. There are coyotes all
over Atlanta. They're everywhere. Um. I have buried Laurent I

(10:48):
feel like a couple of feet because I wanted to
make sure that he, like, the whole idea was that
he became part of the land. And uh, quite frankly,
I didn't want to dig any further than I'm being honest.
That's when I hit that really hard clay pan. But
you don't want a smell, And apparently eighteen thirty will

(11:09):
take care of that. That's enough. That's that's what my
dad always said. That's right. Um. And then so one
of the other things, one of the last things is um,
when you do this, you um are by definition your
land becomes a cemetery. That's like you don't go in
and say I need to file this little plot of
land as a cemetery. Just the act of burying somebody

(11:31):
legally on your land, that portion of your land because
the cemetery, so it's it's protected by all sorts of
um you know laws and anti desecration laws and cemetery
laws and actually these laws like go back to Roman
times from what from what I saw, UM. But to
do that you need to file it with your UM.
There's usually like a cemetery or some sort of commission

(11:53):
that keeps track of all the graves in the town
and and has some giant book. Yeah, that's kind of
the cool this thing. It's a giant book, the black
book covered in dust with gold leafing all around it,
and when you open it it makes a giant echoe
thud when you open it. It does wow when you

(12:13):
open it. In the you know, down the middle, let's
say I got to yeah, yeah, and then a creaky
old finger with a yellow fingernail runs down until it's
the spot where they're going to enter your name in
blood and says, excellent, Well, let's sit huh. Yeah, that's
all I got. It's uh, it's an interesting option, that's
all I'm gonna say. Yeah. Maybe if you're thinking of

(12:35):
doing this, look into all the laws first, agreed. Uh, well,
thank you very much for joining us on short stuff.
This is the end of this short stuff. Stuff you
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(12:55):
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