You Can’t Keep Your Parents’ Skulls

[garbon]

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/09/why-you-cant-display-your-relatives-skull/597307/

You might (or might not) be surprised at how often in my work as a mortician I am asked whether a mourning family member can keep a dearly departed's skull. Assuming your intentions are good, you're looking at three major hurdles to clear before Dad's brainpan can hold jelly beans on your coffee table: paperwork, legal control, and skeletonization.

In theory, people get to decide what happens to their body after death. In reality, it is near impossible to get legal permission to display a relative's skeleton.

I'll tell you what's not going to work: marching over to your local funeral home and saying, "Greetings! That's my mom's corpse over there. Could you just pop off her head and de-flesh her skull? That would be great. Thanks!" Your average funeral home (really, any funeral home) is not set up to handle such a request, legally or practically.

As a funeral professional, I frankly have no idea what equipment a proper decapitation requires. The subsequent de-fleshing would probably involve boiling and/or dermestid beetles, incredible creatures used in museums and forensic labs to delicately eat the dead flesh off a skeleton without destroying the bones. Dermestids are happy to wade into a gruesome, sticky mass of decaying flesh and delicately clean around even the tiniest of bones.

Back to Mom's head. She could create a written, signed, dated document explicitly stating that she wants you to have her skull after she dies. It would be similar to the document people sign if they want to donate their body for scientific research. But even with that paperwork, and aforementioned head removal, my funeral home could not legally hand over the decapitated head, because of something called abuse-of-corpse laws. These laws vary from place to place, and can sometimes seem a little arbitrary. For example, the law in Kentucky says you're committing corpse abuse if you treat a dead body in a way that "would outrage ordinary family sensibilities." But what is an "ordinary family"? Maybe in your "ordinary family" Dad was a scientist who always promised that when he died, he would leave you both his collection of Bunsen burners and his skull.

Abuse-of-corpse laws exist for a reason. They protect people's bodies from being mistreated (ahem, necrophilia). They also prevent a corpse from being snatched from the morgue and used for research or public exhibition without the dead person's consent. History is littered with such violations. Medical professionals have stolen corpses and even dug up fresh graves to get bodies for dissection and research. Then there are cases like that of Julia Pastrana, a 19th-century Mexican woman with a condition called hypertrichosis, which caused hair to grow all over her face and body. After she died, her husband saw that there was money to be made by displaying Pastrana in freak shows, so he took her embalmed and taxidermied corpse on world tour. Pastrana had ceased to be regarded as human; her corpse had become a possession.

Because of abuse-of-corpse laws, nobody's dead body can be claimed as property. "Finders keepers" doesn't apply here. But unfortunately, those same laws prevent you from plopping Mom's skull on your bookcase.

So where do skulls on bookcases come from? In the United States, no federal law prevents owning, buying, or selling human remains, unless the remains are Native American. Otherwise, whether you're able to sell or own human remains is decided by each individual state. At least 38 states have laws that should prevent the sale of human remains, but in reality the laws are vague, confusing, and enforced at random. In one seven-month period in 2012–13, 454 human skulls were listed on eBay, with an average opening bid of just under $650 (eBay subsequently banned the practice).

Many skulls for private sale have questionable origins, sourced from the thriving bone trades in India and China. The bones are usually obtained from people who couldn't afford cremation or burial. So to be clear: You can't own your own mother's corpse, but if you are willing to engage in some suspect internet commerce, a femur from the other side of the world might make its way into your home.

Even if you exploit fuzzy legal arguments in your quest to get your hands on Dad's skull, you're still going to run into a big problem: There is currently no way in the United States to skeletonize human remains for private ownership. For the most part, skeletonization happens only when a body is donated to scientific research. Even this isn't explicitly legal; authorities just tend to look the other way for museums and universities. But under no circumstances can you just skeletonize your dad and display his head among the decorative gourds in the Thanksgiving centerpiece.

In every state, funeral homes use something called a burial-and-transit permit, which tells the state what is going to be done with a dead person's body. Some laws prohibit human remains from being deposited anywhere that's not a cemetery. The options are usually burial, cremation, or donation to science. That's it: three simple things. There is no "cut off the head, de-flesh it, preserve the skull, and then cremate the rest of the body" option. Nothing even close.

If there were any legal wiggle room that might allow a person to get Dad's head liberated from its fleshy shell, Tanya Marsh would know how to find it. Marsh is a law professor and the expert on human-remains law. "I will argue with you all day long," she told me, "that it isn't legal in any state in the United States to reduce a human head to a skull."

[Habbaku]

Muh rahhhts, though. 

[celedhring]

Vaguely related. When I was a kid a flash flood made my town's graveyard partially colapse, and a friend of mine stole a skull. Kids do idiotic kids' things, but I always wondered how his parents let him keep that. He even had a candle on it.

Dude is nowadays a tech entrepreneur, fwiw.

[Maladict]

Vaguely related. When I was a kid a flash flood made my town's graveyard partially colapse, and a friend of mine stole a skull. Kids do idiotic kids' things, but I always wondered how his parents let him keep that. He even had a candle on it.

Dude is nowadays a tech entrepreneur, fwiw.

Friend of mine (well, acquaintance) had a full skeleton laid out in his living room, also from an uprooted graveyard. I think he dabbled in satanism at the time, so it wasn't weird or anything.

[Malthus]

My friend and I came up with this:

LAST SUPPLEMENTARY WILL


      THIS IS THE LAST WILL of me, ________________, of the City of Toronto, Province of Ontario, with respect to the disposition only of certain of my mortal remains (the "skull") defined as follows:

the bony framework of the head, composed of the cranial bones and the bones of the face; including, but not necessarily limited to, the ethmoid, frontal, hyoid, lacrimal, nasal, occipital, palatine, parietal, sphenoid, temporal, and zygomatic bones, and the inferior nasal conchae, mandible, maxillae, and vomer.

I declare that I have, or will have at the time of my death, made a separate will disposing of all my other assets.


I.   I REVOKE all former wills and other testamentary dispositions made by me in respect to the disposition only of the skull.

II.   I APPOINT __________________ to be the Estate Trustee, Executor and Trustee of this my Will, provided that if said person shall have predeceased me or shall be unwilling or unable to act or to continue to act as such, than this my Will is rendered null and void.

III.   I GIVE the skull to my Trustees upon the following trusts, namely:

(a)   In the discretion of my Trustees, and at their own expense, I empower the Trustees to separate the skull from the residue of my mortal remains in a manner consistent with proper, decent and dignified treatment of human remains.

(b)   In the discretion of my Trustees, and at their own expense, to clean the skull of all flesh and other perishable matter in such a manner as to do no damage to the bones defined above.

(c)   In the discretion of my Trustees, and at their own expense, to construct an apparatus such that the skull may be used as a drinking cup or vessel.

(d)   In the discretion of my Trustees, and at their own expense, to decorate the skull in a manner that, in the sole and absolute discretion of my trustee, shall be deemed tasteful.

(e)   To transfer and assign the skull following the operations described above to ______________, for his own use absolutely.   

IV.   I DECLARE that the treatment of the skull as described in the trusts above is consistent with my religious, cultural and personal morality and beliefs, and in no way constitutes neglect of any duty owing to my remains or improper or indecent interference or indignity to my remains contrary to sections 182(a) or (b) of the federal Criminal Code, or any successor legislation thereto.   

V.   I DECLARE that I have received no valuable consideration, directly or indirectly, from any person for the use or ownership of the skull, and that the gift of the skull does not offend section 10 of the Ontario Human Tissue Gift Act, or any successor legislation thereto.

VI.   MY TRUSTEES AND BENEFICIARY shall be fully protected in exercising any discretion granted to them in this my Will and shall not be liable or accountable to any person, including but not limited to my spouse, my descendants, my parents or their heirs or personal representatives by reason of the exercise of such discretion. My Trustees shall exercise the powers, authority and discretion given to them in what they deem to be the best interest of the beneficiary, and such exercise of their powers, authority and discretion shall be binding and shall not be subject to any question or review, by any person, official, authority, court or tribunal whatsoever or whomsoever.

VII.   I DECLARE that no gift under this my Will shall be assigned or anticipated, or fall into any community of property, partnership or other form of sharing or division of property which may exist between the beneficiary and his spouse, and the gift shall remain the separate property of the beneficiary hereunder, free from all property rights or controls by his spouse. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, I direct that the gift and other benefits granted by me under this my Will shall be excluded from the net family property of the beneficiary and the value therefrom shall not be subject to division between the beneficiary and his spouse pursuant to the Ontario Family Law Act, or any successor legislation thereto.

VIII.   IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have to this my Last Will and Testament, written upon this and the preceding page, subscribed my name this ______ day of _____________, 20--.

SIGNED by the testator, ___________________,   )
as his last Will, in the presence of us, both present   )
at the same time, who at his request, in his presence   )   ________________________
and in the presence of each other have hereunto   )
subscribed our names as witnesses.            )
WITNESS:
Name:___________________________________   )
Address:_________________________________   )   ________________________
Occupation:______________________________   )
WITNESS:
Name:___________________________________   )
Address:_________________________________   )   ________________________
Occupation:______________________________   )

[dps]

I will argue with you all day long," she told me, "that it isn't legal in any state in the United States to reduce a human head to a skull."

Don't think any state can actually outlaw the passage of time.   

[viper37]

As a funeral professional, I frankly have no idea what equipment a proper decapitation requires. The subsequent de-fleshing would probably involve boiling and/or dermestid beetles, incredible creatures used in museums and forensic labs to delicately eat the dead flesh off a skeleton without destroying the bones. Dermestids are happy to wade into a gruesome, sticky mass of decaying flesh and delicately clean around even the tiniest of bones.

Huns and Vikings knew how to do that.  And then, we invented universities and that knowledge was lost.   

[Eddie Teach]

Not lost, just not her specialty.