Southern Life & Health Ins. Co. v. Morgan, 21 Ala. App. 5 (Ala. Ct. App. 1925), is an Alabama Court of Appeals case that established that spouses can lose their rights in the honoring of the deceased if they do not act within a reasonable time, and the case establishes that the next of kin will assume the rights.
The plaintiff is a father bringing the suit against an insurance company that wrongfully withheld a medical certificate of death form. Due to the delay in returning the form required for burial, the father was unable to put his son to rest and the caretakers had to bury the son’s body due to decay. The plaintiff brought multiple claims based on tort and other common law claims for the wrongful interference of burial and withholding of property.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s judgment in favor of the plaintiff on the tort claims because the defendant intentionally withheld the forms which were the lawful property of the plaintiff, and time was of the essence due to the body not being embalmed. The Court of Appeals denied the application for rehearing, citing its finding of a proper cause of action and findings by the jury.
In the rehearing application, the Court rejected the defendant’s arguments that the father could not bring a claim because it was only the right of the spouse to do so. The Court explained that there are no property rights of bodies, but those with relations to the deceased share in the rights of honoring and putting the deceased to rest.
Typically, the spouse has primary rights in burial and other decisions, but the spouse must timely intervene in the caring of the deceased. Here, the son’s spouse was not even known to the rest of the family nor did the spouse ever make an appearance. Since the spouse could bring a claim against the defendant, the Court affirmed that the next of kin, in this case the father, could bring the claim if the spouse waived their rights.
[Last updated in September of 2023 by the Wex Definitions Team]