Old Family Cemetery... you've got a problem

[Driftwood]

I'm glad this isn't my problem, just something I heard about.

Old man 100+ dies. Home/property sits abandoned for some time because he's got no one left.
County takes the property because of taxes or whatever and plans to auction it off on the courthouse steps.
Some random great-great cousin pops up and asks, "What are you going to do about the cemetery on the property?"
"Wait. What? What cemetery?" He takes them right to not a couple of old depressions in the ground but 15-20 clearly marked graves from the 1800s that you can still read the tombstones.

So... you've got a piece of property no one is really responsible for; no one wants it; even if you sell it, the new buyers can't do much with it.

What the heck do they do? Beats me. Glad it's not my problem.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

"Here's an arm."

"Here's a leg."

"Here's a wing!"

 

[UNCGrad]

Poltergeist 5?

 

[I Should Coco]

If it was valuable, in-demand property in the outer suburbs of a city, say, they would find the money to remove the remains to another site.

But out in the boondocks? I guess whoever ends up with the property gets a 200 year old cemetery as a "bonus."

 

[Driftwood]

I'm sure eventually they'll find somebody, but good luck selling land to someone when they know up front there is a part of it they can never use.
I guess, depending on the area, you could plant a perimeter of spreading evergreen trees and just pretend it's not there.
If you wind up owning an old cemetery, do you have to pay property tax on that?

 

[Driftwood]

I don't remember the exact verbiage that was used, but when I sold my farm, I was essentially asked about bodies on the property and had to sign that there weren't any.
I made them write it something along the lines of "no known cemeteries or marked graves" on the property. I wasn't signing anything under penalty of law that there were "no" bodies on a 45-acre tract of land that had be inhabited since the Woodland Period.
I know there hasn't been anybody buried there in my lifetime, and I have no reason to suspect nor heard any legends that anyone was during my parents, grandparents, or great grandparents time. Prior to that, I can't say. There was some sort of Indian settlement on the property at some point because we found artifacts over the years. There was also a railroad and airport on the property.
The last thing I would have needed is some developer digging a basement, hitting a burial ground, and coming back to sue me.

 

[Twirling Time]

Cemetery laws depend on your state.

For historic cemeteries in Texas, the law states, "Any person who wishes to visit a cemetery or private burial grounds for which no public ingress or egress is available shall have the right to reasonable ingress and egress for the purpose of visitation at a reasonable time and with proper notification to the property owner." This gravesite would fall under this rule in Texas.

A benefit would be the paragraph that "All cemetery property is exempt from public taxation and may not be sold on execution." Texas law also allows cities to take over upkeep of cemeteries and also for counties to provide funds for upkeep of neglected cemeteries in unincorporated areas.

All I got.

 

[I Should Coco]

I know in my part of Washington state, any new development — lately, a lot of solar and/or wind farms on former pasture land — has to pass a "historic survey" to make sure there are no Native American burial grounds or remains on the site. We have/had quite a few tribes that are tied to the "dry" side of the state.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

I don't remember the exact verbiage that was used, but when I sold my farm, I was essentially asked about bodies on the property and had to sign that there weren't any.
I made them write it something along the lines of "no known cemeteries or marked graves" on the property. I wasn't signing anything under penalty of law that there were "no" bodies on a 45-acre tract of land that had be inhabited since the Woodland Period.
I know there hasn't been anybody buried there in my lifetime, and I have no reason to suspect nor heard any legends that anyone was during my parents, grandparents, or great grandparents time. Prior to that, I can't say. There was some sort of Indian settlement on the property at some point because we found artifacts over the years. There was also a railroad and airport on the property.
The last thing I would have needed is some developer digging a basement, hitting a burial ground, and coming back to sue me.

This is what you want us to believe, anyway.