Kyle,
The law does not apply to Township, or any governmental owned cemeteries,
and may not apply to your association:
Sec. 1. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b), this chapter does not
apply to:
(1) a cemetery owned by a municipal corporation or other governmental unit;
(2) a religious cemetery; or
(3) a cemetery:
(A) that is ten (10) acres or less in size;
(B) that is owned and operated entirely and exclusively by a nonprofit
mutual association in existence on June 14, 1939; and
(C) in which burials have taken place before June 14, 1939.
(b) If a cemetery described in subsection (a)(3) directly or indirectly:
(1) constructs or permits to be constructed any structure, above or below
ground, and offers interment rights in the structure for sale to the
general public; or
(2) acquires:
(A) additional land; or
(B) an interest in additional land;
causing the cemetery to exceed ten (10) acres in size;
this chapter applies to the whole of the cemetery.
As added by P.L.52-1997, SEC.22.
The man that purchased the two cemeteries in Princeton, as far as we can
determine, is not even incorporated. At any rate, none of the exceptions
would apply to him. Your cemetery probably flls under 3 A, B, or C?
Ernie
At 03:15 PM 08/30/2003 -0400, you wrote:
I raised this issue a few weeks ago when it was tossed out...I only
want to
caution everyone as to the ramifications of mandating the issue of perpetual
care. The true meaning of perpetual care is to not touch the money and to
work
off of the interest. As I mentioned previously, this is not realistic with
today's practices and expenses. Our forefathers had no idea what it would
cost
to maintain these burying grounds 100 years later. If we push the issue of
the perpetual care to the extent of the law, many of us, and I mean us as
those
on this list that sit on cemetery associations, could easily be in violation
as we are currently using the principle to operate our cemetery. The
alternative would be to drastically increase the cost of burial lots
and/or allow less
maintenance to occur due to the money being tied up and unavailable. I hope
we don't make things worse for those groups (who are probably in the
majority)
that have had to make exceptions to their original covenants just to make
ends
meet.
And I have a question for the township trustees....how does the perpetual
care regulations pertain to township owned cemeteries? Are you all in
compliance?
I just hate to see everyone penalized because of a few bad apples...
Kyle
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