Burial and Cremation Act 1964

Closing of cemeteries and burial grounds

42: Saving of rights

You could also call this:

"Your rights are protected when a cemetery closes"

Illustration for Burial and Cremation Act 1964

You have rights when a cemetery or burial ground is closed. The closure does not affect your rights to the land or buildings. You still have the right to visit and manage the site. When someone is buried in a cemetery before it is closed, their family can still be buried with them. This includes husbands, wives, civil union partners, de facto partners, parents, children, brothers, and sisters. But there are some rules, like not being able to bury someone in a denominational burial ground if they were not part of that denomination. If you own a plot of land in a cemetery that is closed, you can choose a new plot in another cemetery. You can do this within two years of the closure, and you will not have to pay for the new plot. The new plot will be the same size as the one you had before.

This text is automatically generated. It might be out of date or be missing some parts. Find out more about how we do this.

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM355812.

This page was last updated on 12 December 2025 — View changes

41: Minister may close cemeteries and burial grounds, or

"The Minister can close a cemetery or burial ground and make rules about it."

43: Closed cemeteries, or

"Cemeteries that are closed to new burials and have special rules to care for them"

Part 6Closing of cemeteries and burial grounds

42Saving of rights

Subject to any notice in the Gazette that may be published by the Minister under this Part, nothing in this Act relating to the closing of cemeteries or burial grounds shall be construed to divest, alter, or affect the right, title, or interest of any local authority, trustee, guardian, manager, or other person in or to any part of the closed cemetery or closed burial ground or in or to any vault, monument, church, chapel or any other place, matter, or thing therein, or such free right of ingress or egress as they respectively have in, from, and through the same, or to affect such right of control and management of the site of such burying places as they have, save as to future burials.
Notwithstanding the existence of a closing order, where any person has been buried in a cemetery, denominational burial ground, or private burial ground before any such order comes into effect, any survivor of such person, being within the degrees of relationship of husband, wife, civil union partner, de facto partner, parent, child, brother, or sister to the deceased, may be buried in the same plot of ground with the said deceased:

provided that nothing contained in this subsection shall enable the burial in a denominational burial ground of the body of a person who was not at the time of his death a practising member of the denomination concerned or the burial in a private burial ground of a body the burial of which in such burial ground is prohibited by subsection (3) of section 36.
Any person who has acquired a plot of ground wherein no burial has been made in any cemetery which is the subject of a closing order shall be entitled, at any time within 2 years after the date when the closing order came into effect, to select free of charge, in another cemetery under the control and management of the same local authority, subject to any bylaws relating thereto, a plot of ground for the burial of the dead equal in size to that of the use whereof he has been deprived by the order.

Compare

1908 No 19 ss 73, 74, 77

Notes

Section 42(1): amended, on 1 January 1969, by section 2 of the Burial and Cremation Amendment Act 1968 (1968 No 71).
Section 42(2): amended, on 26 April 2005, by section 7 of the Relationships (Statutory References) Act 2005 (2005 No 3).