Chapter 114

Section 43J. Every cemetery association or other agency establishing, maintaining and operating a community mausoleum on or after July first, nineteen hundred and thirty-six, shall create and establish a permanent care and improvement fund, distinct and separate from the permanen…

Section 43K. The treasurer of the cemetery in which such community mausoleum is situated shall be the custodian of the permanent care and improvement fund established therefor as aforesaid and every such fund shall be held, administered and invested in the manner provided by law …

Section 43L. Any cemetery, community mausoleum or columbarium established, maintained or operated in violation of or contrary to any provision of this chapter shall be a nuisance and may be abated or enjoined as such at the suit of any taxpayer of the commonwealth.

Section 43M. Except as otherwise provided by law, or in case of a dead body being rightfully carried through or removed from the commonwealth for the purpose of burial or disposition elsewhere, every dead body of a human being dying within the commonwealth, and the remains of any…

Section 43N. Whoever fails to comply with or violates any provision of this chapter in respect to the establishment, maintenance or operation of a cemetery, community mausoleum, crematory or columbarium, or to the disposal of dead human bodies, shall, unless another penalty is pr…

Section 43O. The following corporations owning or operating cemeteries shall not sell or engage in the business of selling monuments for cemetery lots:— Municipal corporations, cemetery corporations organized under general laws, and cemetery corporations organized by acts of inco…

Section 44. The body of a deceased person shall not be cremated within 48 hours after his decease unless he died of a contagious or infectious disease, and, if the death occurred within the commonwealth, the body shall not be cremated by any corporation authorized to cremate the …

Section 44A. The body of a deceased person to be cremated shall be contained in a suitable receptacle; provided, however, that a casket shall not be used for such cremation unless such use has been requested by a person lawfully entitled to the custody and control of such body.

Section 45. Except as provided in sections forty-four and forty-six, no undertaker or other person shall bury or otherwise dispose of a human body in a town, or remove therefrom a human body which has not been buried, until he has received a permit from the board of health or its…

Section 45A. No funeral director, whether doing business as an individual, partnership or corporation, shall permit his name to be used in connection with any death certificate or burial permit unless he was specifically engaged to perform the burial to which such permit or certi…

Section 46. Whenever a dead body is brought into the commonwealth for burial, accompanied by a removal permit issued under the laws of the state from which such body is brought, such permit shall be received as sufficient authority for burial, and the superintendent or person or …

Section 46A. No permit for the burial or other disposition of the body of a deceased veteran, known to be such, as the term veteran is defined in section twenty-one of chapter thirty-one, shall be issued unless and until an affidavit, as hereinafter set forth, shall have been fil…

Section 47. No person having the care of a cemetery, burial ground or crematory shall permit the burial, removal or cremation of a human body until the permit for such burial, removal or cremation has been delivered to him, nor permit the ashes of a human body to be buried therei…

Section 48. An undertaker shall not bury the ashes of a human body until he has received from the person having the charge of the crematory a certificate that the burial permit and the certificate of the medical examiner prerequisite to the cremating of said body have been duly p…

Section 49. The board of health of each town shall annually, on or before May first, license persons to act as funeral directors therein upon such terms and conditions as the board of registration in embalming and funeral directing, established by section twenty-nine of chapter t…

Section 5. Such corporation may hold funds in trust and apply the income thereof to the improvement or embellishment of the cemetery or to the care, preservation or embellishment of any lot or its appurtenances.

Section 50. Violations of any of the provisions of sections forty-four to forty-eight, inclusive, shall be punished by a fine of not more than fifty dollars.

Section 51. No person shall sell, offer for sale, or supply others with any embalming fluid, or any substitute therefor, which contains more than five milligrams of arsenic per litre. Violation of any provision of this section shall be punished by a fine of one thousand dollars o…

Section 5A. No such cemetery corporation shall deny the right to perform burials and the functions incidental thereto to the funeral director designated by the representative of the deceased, provided the deceased is otherwise entitled to interment in said cemetery.

Section 5B. Each such cemetery corporation shall notify, or cause the funeral director designated by the representatives of the deceased to notify, the family of the deceased or the person making funeral arrangements for the deceased of the choice of three options for burial serv…

Section 5C. The corporation and its officers shall owe a fiduciary duty to a contributor to the trust fund, his heirs and legal representatives to hold and expend the funds strictly consistent with the purposes of section 5. A contributor to the trust fund, his heirs and legal re…

Section 6. Such corporation may cremate bodies of the dead, and may provide necessary buildings and appliances therefor and for the disposition of the ashes of the dead on any land within its cemetery which the department of environmental protection determines is suitable therefo…

Section 7. Five or more persons may form a corporation, not for profit, for the purpose of providing the necessary appliances for the disposal by cremation of the bodies of the dead. Such a corporation shall be formed in the manner prescribed in and subject to section nine of cha…

Section 8. Such corporation may acquire and hold in fee, to an amount not exceeding fifty thousand dollars, land necessary and appropriate for its purposes and situated in such place as the department of public health determines to be suitable, subject to the provisions of sectio…

Section 9. Cemetery and crematory corporations may, subject to the approval of said department, make by-laws and regulations consistent with law for the reception and cremation of bodies of the dead and for the disposition of the ashes thereof, and shall conduct their business in…