Marion Gauthier, edited by Laura Laplaud 6:10 am, November 01, 2021
From the steps to be taken to the management of burials on the occasion of the funeral, relatives of a deceased person sometimes find themselves helpless.
The Defender of Rights, Claire Hédon, released a report last week in which she calls for deep reform in favor of the rights of the deceased and their loved ones.
"An archaic and poorly known funeral right", indicates the Defender of rights Claire Hédon in her report entitled "Rights engraved in marble? The deceased and his relatives facing the public funeral service", about the rights of the deceased and relatives whom she considers no longer to be adapted to the modern family.
It even reports a doubling of the number of complaints made each year since 2014, and recommends in particular a modernization of funeral law.
Too old a right?
Little reformed, funeral law has hardly changed since the Napoleonic era.
Blood ties still prevail at the time of burial but the increase in divorces, the establishment of PACS or same-sex marriage are creating "unprecedented situations", according to the Defender of Rights.
Claire Hédon has been seized by blended families, by children who cannot bury their mother and stepfather together.
The Defender of Rights also evokes the case of a PACS woman, unable to cremate her spouse.
"These are always very painful situations where we discover the problem at the time of the death of the person where we realize that we cannot bury him in the concession," she recalls.
"We must be as clear as possible in the law, adapt to family changes, recomposed, seems absolutely essential to us."
"The body of the deceased is not an inanimate object"
Only a family member is allowed to make such a decision.
"The body of the deceased is not an inanimate object!", She insists, pleading for an overhaul of the rule to broaden the notion of family and take into account the will of the person and his relatives, until to reduce the gap between law and reality.