I practiced commercial real estate law in my hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana for about ten years before moving to North Carolina. Around the time I started teaching, I discovered that basically nobody in legal academia researches and writes about funeral and cemetery law even though (spoiler alert) we’re all going to die.
There isn’t anything more universal than death, and it turns out that the law of human remains is really misunderstood and complicated. There is simultaneously more law than you ever could have imagined, and stunning radio silence on some really important points. What the rules are, how they impact us, and the way that death care is changing — these are all things that we will talk about a lot on Death, et seq.
I have written a couple of books about death care law:
- The Law of Human Remains (2015) (the first treatise on funeral law in the United States since 1950)
- Cemetery Law: The Common Law of Burying Grounds in the United States (2015) (co-authored with Daniel Gibson)
- Disposition of Human Remains: A Legal Research Guide (2015)
- The Regulation of the Funeral Services Industry: A Legal Research Guide (2018 – forthcoming)
I have a husband — Blane — and a couple of kids — Riley is 12 and Liam is 17. I drag them to a lot of cemeteries. I also drag them to a lot of concerts, especially The Avett Brothers. In addition to The Funeral and Cemetery Law Blog, which features a lot of writing by me and by my students, I also co-run the Tales of Avett News blog. Guess which blog gets more hits?
Many thanks to:
- Silent James for the podcast logo
- David Childers and Riley Sherman for the music heard in each episode
- Rebecca Morrow for creating the name of the podcast
- Liam Sherman for his production assistance