Chapter 114

Section 1. For purposes of this chapter the following words shall, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise, have the following meanings:— ''Burial right'', the right to burial in a grave or lot held by the licensee of the grave or lot; however, the license is not equivalen…

Section 10. Each town shall provide one or more suitable places for the interment of persons dying within its limits.

Section 10A. No municipality shall take over the ownership of an unoccupied grave unless a minimum of seventy-five years has elapsed after issuance of a license for the grave by the municipality or its predecessor in interest; and the municipality cannot locate the license holder…

Section 11. If there is necessity for a new cemetery in a town, or for the enlargement of an existing cemetery in and belonging to a town, and the owner or any person interested in the land needed for either purpose refuses to sell the same, or demands therefor a price which the …

Section 12. The commissioners shall appoint a time and place for a hearing, and shall cause notice thereof and a copy of the petition to be served personally upon the owner, if known, or left at his place of abode, fourteen days at least before the time appointed for the hearing.…

Section 13. The commissioners shall hear the parties at the time and place appointed or at an adjournment thereof, shall adjudicate upon the necessity of such taking, upon the quantity and boundaries of any land adjudged necessary to be taken, and may take in fee under chapter se…

Section 14. Each commissioner shall be paid by the town three dollars a day for each day spent in acting under the petition, and five cents a mile for travel to and from the place of hearing.

Section 15. Towns may appropriate money for enclosing any cemetery lawfully provided by them or for constructing paths and avenues and embellishing the grounds therein, and may establish all necessary rules relative thereto consistent with law. They may lay out such cemetery into…

Section 16. Any town may annually appropriate and raise by taxation such sums as may be necessary to care for and keep in good order and to protect by proper fences any or all burial grounds within the town in which ten or more bodies are interred and which are not properly cared…

Section 17. A town shall not alienate or appropriate to any other use than that of a burial ground, any tract of land which has been for more than one hundred years used as a burial place; and no portion of such burial ground shall be taken for public use without special authorit…

Section 18. Any town having within its limits an abandoned or neglected burying ground may take charge of the same and keep it in good order, and may appropriate money therefor, but no property rights shall be violated and no body shall be disinterred. No fence, tomb, monument or…

Section 19. A city or town may receive, hold and apply any funds, money or securities deposited with the treasurer thereof for the preservation, care, improvement or embellishment of any public or private burial place situated therein, or of burial lots situated in such burial pl…

Section 1A. Five or more persons desirous of procuring, establishing and preparing a cemetery, or who are the majority in interest of the proprietors of an existing cemetery, may organize as a corporation, not for profit, in the manner provided in chapter 179; provided, however, …

Section 1B. A person who serves as director, officer or trustee of a nonprofit cemetery qualified as a tax exempt organization under section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code and who is not compensated for those services shall not be liable for an act or omission resulting in d…

Section 2. (a) Such corporation: (1) shall be subject to chapter 155 and sections 1 to 13, inclusive, of chapter 179; (2) may take and hold only so much real and personal property as may be necessary for the objects of its organization; (3) may lay out such real property into lot…

Section 20. Money declared by written instrument to be intended for perpetual care, maintenance, improvement or embellishment of any cemetery, or of any lots or plots therein, to an amount not less than two hundred dollars, may be deposited with the state treasurer, who shall rec…

Section 21. The state treasurer shall invest such money in the name of the commonwealth, in bonds or other obligations of the commonwealth or in securities in which he is authorized to invest money in behalf of the commonwealth; and, on the first days of February and August in ea…

Section 22. A town which accepts this and the four following sections or has accepted corresponding provisions of earlier laws may, at any town meeting, elect by ballot a board of cemetery commissioners consisting of three persons. If such board is first chosen at a meeting other…

Section 23. Said board shall have the sole care, superintendence and management of all public burial grounds in its town, may lay out any existing public burial grounds in its town or any land purchased and set apart by said town for such cemeteries, in lots or other suitable sub…

Section 24. Said board may, by deed made and executed in such manner and form as it may prescribe, convey to any person the sole and exclusive right of burial in any lot in such cemeteries and of erecting tombs, cenotaphs and other monuments or structures thereon upon such terms …

Section 25. A town in which cemetery commissioners are chosen may receive gifts or bequests for maintaining cemeteries or cemetery lots, which shall be paid into the town treasury and, with the accounts thereof, shall be kept separate from the other money and accounts of said tow…

Section 26. Said board shall not incur debts or liabilities for purposes other than aforesaid nor to an amount exceeding the amount of the funds subject to their order, and it shall annually make a written report to said town of its official acts, of the condition of such cemeter…

Section 27. If a town so votes under section twenty-one of chapter forty-one the selectmen shall appoint a board of cemetery commissioners to consist of three members, to be appointed for the term of three years. The commissioners shall, under the supervision and control of the s…

Section 28. The owner of any right, title or interest in or to a lot, tomb or monument in any cemetery owned or controlled by any company or association or by any town, may convey or devise the same to such company, association or municipality in trust for the purpose of its pres…

Section 29. Lots in cemeteries incorporated under section one, tombs in public cemeteries in cities and lots and tombs in public cemeteries in towns, shall be held indivisible, and upon the decease of a proprietor of such lot the title thereto shall vest in the heirs at law or de…

Section 2A. A cemetery corporation organized under this chapter or created by special act or charter shall disclose to its clients whether an owner, director or trustee of the cemetery corporation owns 10 per cent or more of a business that sells products or services to the cemet…

Section 3. Every cemetery corporation created by special charter or organized under general laws shall regularly keep books in which it shall enter all conveyances of burial lots within said cemetery and all instruments of contract relating to conveyances of such lots. Such recor…

Section 30. Before entering of record the name of any person to represent such lot or tomb, the board of cemetery commissioners, if any, or the board of health of a town shall hear the parties entitled to the control thereof at such time and place as it shall have previously appo…

Section 31. If in a will no express disposition or other mention is made of a cemetery lot owned by the testator at his decease, and wherein he or any member of his family is buried, the ownership of the lot shall not pass from his lawful heirs by any residuary or other general c…

Section 32. A person shall be entitled to a right of interment for his own body in any burial lot or tomb of which his spouse was seized at any time during marriage, which shall be exempt from the operation of the laws relating to conveyance, descent and devise, but may be releas…

Section 33. A husband shall have the same rights in the tomb or burial lot of his wife as a wife has in that of her husband.

Section 34. Except in the case of the erection or use of a tomb on private land for the exclusive use of the family of the owner, no land, other than that already so used or appropriated, shall be used for burial, unless by permission of the town or of the mayor and aldermen of t…

Section 35. No land other than that so used and appropriated on April tenth, nineteen hundred and eight, shall be used for the purpose of burial if it be so situated that surface water or ground drainage therefrom may enter any stream, pond, reservoir, well, filter gallery or oth…

Section 36. Any person, including those persons in control of any public land, or the officers of any municipality, aggrieved by the action of a board of health in approving the purchase, taking or use of any lands for cemetery purposes may, within sixty days, appeal from the ord…

Section 37. Boards of health may make regulations concerning burial grounds and interments within their towns; may impose penalties not exceeding one hundred dollars for a breach thereof; may prohibit the use by undertakers, for the purpose of speculation, of tombs as places of d…

Section 38. Before a tomb, burial ground or cemetery is closed by order of the board of health for more than one month, all persons interested shall have an opportunity to be heard, and personal notice of the time and place of hearing shall be given to at least one owner of the t…

Section 39. The owner of a tomb aggrieved by an order of the board of health closing a tomb, burial ground or cemetery may, within six months after the date thereof, appeal therefrom to the superior court, first giving written notice to the board fourteen days before the entry of…

Section 3A. No cemetery corporation created by special charter or organized under the provisions of section one shall take over ownership of an unoccupied grave unless a minimum of seventy-five years has elapsed after issuance of a license for the grave by the cemetery corporatio…

Section 4. The secretary or clerk of such corporation may give certified copies of all deeds and instruments so recorded, which may be used in evidence in the same manner as copies certified by the register of deeds.

Section 40. Appeals shall be tried before a jury, and if the jury find that the tomb, burial ground or cemetery so closed was not a nuisance or injurious to the public health at the time of the order and that the closing thereof was not necessary for the protection of the public …

Section 41. A public way shall not be laid out or constructed in, upon or through an enclosure used or appropriated for a burial place except by special authority from the general court or with the previous consent of the inhabitants of the town where such enclosure is situated; …

Section 42. Whoever uses as a means of passage from one point to another, not being thereupon at the time for any other purpose, the premises of a cemetery or burial place, in any other parts thereof than the defined ways, paths and walks, shall be punished by a fine of not more …

Section 42A. No cemetery exempted from taxation under the provisions of section five of chapter fifty-nine shall be closed for visitations between the hours of eight o'clock antemeridian and sunset, except during the months of June, July, August and September when such cemeteries…

Section 42B. No person shall use the premises of a cemetery or burial place for the purpose of taking photographs or making a motion picture for commercial purposes without the previous consent of the board of commissioners, trustees or directors of such cemetery or burial place …

Section 43. No building shall be erected upon any burial place belonging to a city, except by special authority from the general court, or with the previous consent of the city council.

Section 43A. No cemetery established on or after July first, nineteen hundred and thirty-six, shall be owned, maintained or operated except by a municipality or other political subdivision of the commonwealth, a church, a religious or charitable society, or by a cemetery associat…

Section 43B. The sale of cemetery lots and plots, or the sale of crypts in a community mausoleum or niches in a columbarium, for speculative purposes, or the conveyance of any portion of a cemetery already dedicated to burial purposes as security for debt, is hereby prohibited, a…

Section 43C. The proceeds of the sales of lots and plots in a cemetery shall, except as hereinafter provided, be applied solely to the improvement and maintenance of the cemetery and the avenues, paths and structures situated therein, for the purchase of additional cemetery land,…

Section 43D. Every community mausoleum, other than a structure containing crypts erected or controlled by a church or a religious society and used only as a repository for the remains of the clergy or dignitaries of such church or religious society, and every crematory, columbari…

Section 43E. No community mausoleum, the crypts of which are available to the public for burial purposes, shall be erected without the consent and approval of the department of environmental protection. Before commencing the erection of any such structure, full detailed plans and…