Family row over dad's burial reaches High Court

A family row over whether a 95-year-old man should be cremated or buried has reached the High Court.

Michael Godwin died in a hospital in Leeds last November after returning to the UK for a holiday in August. He had previously expressed a wish to be buried in France.

But his body has remained partially embalmed in a mortuary since shortly after his death, after two of his three sons, William and Jason Godwin, became embroiled in a dispute over how he should be laid to rest.

On Wednesday a judge ordered Michael be buried in the UK as part of a Church of England funeral.

At a hearing in Leeds earlier this month, William asked a judge at the High Court to declare he had the "lawful authority to arrange and instruct" his father's cremation, and that Jason had "no lawful authority to prevent or interfere" with it.

But Judge Jonathan Klein ruled that Michael should be buried in England - and ordered that William "must extend an invitation" to his brother.

The judge said Michael, who was a member of the Church of England, had expressed a "consistent wish" to be buried and that repatriating his body to France could cause "significant delay".

The court heard Michael was born in Surbiton, south London, in 1929, and had enjoyed an "impressive career" in lift engineering.

He had lived in the south of France for more than 30 years and, in a homemade will written in 2003, expressed a wish for his body to be interred in a cemetery in Hargeville, near Paris, which was the home town of his then-partner.

But Judge Klein said the delay in Michael's funeral meant his body "will have decomposed in the more than five months since his death".

"Distressingly, it may be in a state of putrefaction," he added.

Judge Klein said Jason had wanted his father to be buried in Hargeville, in line with his expressed wishes, but William wanted a cremation as the family had "no connection" to the French cemetery.

Ordering an English burial, the judge said that none of the Godwin family "has ever had any other connection with Hargeville" and that it was "unlikely that anyone will visit Mr Godwin's grave if he is buried there".

He also said that a funeral in France "will lose some of its meaning or value if none of the likely mourners can speak French".

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