Braun v. Selig

¶1 — Under the General Cemetery Act, chapter 68.50 RCW, the right to control the disposition of human remains, in the absence of evidence of a decedent’s expressed wishes regarding the disposition of that person’s remains, “vests in” an “order named” that places the decedent’s surviving spouse at a higher level of statutory kinship priority than the decedent’s surviving parent.1 When a private request for exhumation of human remains is made, a corollary statute provides that the same kinship hierarchy governs the request.2

*46¶2 In this case, in the absence of established testamentary intent,…