Finding holders of burial plot rights a challenge

LEEUWARDEN - Address unknown is a recurring problem to cemetery-owning Dutch municipalities, which by law must inform holders of burial plot rights – often heirs of the deceased - when graves need to be cleared of any remains so that the site can be reused. In other cases, the municipalities are looking for owed maintenance fees for the burial plots. Such fees have risen sharply over the past few decades. Servicing privately owned burial plots, which were sold with unlimited rights, presents them with a significant problem. In places where cremations are popular, the urgency to reuse the plots has subsided. The current popular practice is to lease the plots out for ten, twenty or thirty year terms, while the trade in burial plots has all but disappeared. A cemetery umbrella group dryly notes that few people think of notifying the cemetery of their new address.