(a) Except as provided in subsection (b), no person shall:

Terms Used In Tennessee Code 62-5-508

  • Body parts: means limbs or other portions of the anatomy that are removed from a living person for medical purposes during biopsy, treatment or surgery. See Tennessee Code 62-5-501
  • Cremation: means the heating process by which a human body or body parts are reduced to bone fragments through combustion and evaporation. See Tennessee Code 62-5-101
  • Crematory: includes crematorium. See Tennessee Code 62-5-101
  • Decedent: A deceased person.
  • Funeral establishment: means any business, whether a proprietorship, partnership, firm, association or corporation, engaged in arranging, directing or supervising funerals for profit or other benefit, the preparing of dead human bodies for burial, the disposition of dead human bodies, the provision or maintenance of place for the preparation for disposition, or for the care or disposition of human bodies. See Tennessee Code 62-5-101
  • Person: includes a corporation, firm, company or association. See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
  • Personal representative: when applied to those who represent a decedent, includes executors and administrators, unless the context implies heirs and distributees. See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
  • Record: means information that is inscribed on a tangible medium or that is stored in an electronic or other medium and is retrievable in a perceivable form. See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
  • Temporary container: means a receptacle for cremated remains composed of cardboard, plastic, metal or another material that can be closed in a manner that prevents the leakage or spillage of the cremated remains and the entrance of foreign material and that is of sufficient size to hold the cremated remains until they are placed in an urn or scattered. See Tennessee Code 62-5-501
  • Urn: means a receptacle designed to encase cremated remains permanently. See Tennessee Code 62-5-501
  • written: includes printing, typewriting, engraving, lithography, and any other mode of representing words and letters. See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
(1) Dispose of the cremated remains of a dead human body or body parts in such a manner or in such a location that the cremated remains are commingled with those of another decedent or body parts removed from another decedent or living person; or
(2) Place the cremated remains of more than one (1) decedent or of body parts removed from more than one (1) decedent or living person in the same urn or temporary container.
(b) Notwithstanding subsection (a), a person may:

(1) Scatter cremated remains at sea, by air or in a dedicated area at a cemetery used exclusively for the scattering on the ground of the cremated remains of dead human bodies or body parts;
(2) Commingle cremated remains of more than one (1) decedent or of body parts removed from more than one (1) decedent or living person or the placement in the same urn or temporary container of the cremated remains of more than one (1) decedent or of body parts removed from more than one (1) decedent or living person if operating under specific instructions from the decedent or decedents or an heir or personal representative designated by the decedent or decedents to make such a decision; and
(3) If the person is operating under the decedent’s instructions, commingle the cremated remains or body parts removed from another decedent or living person, after receipt of the cremated remains or the body parts, with those of another decedent or body parts removed from another decedent or living person.
(c) Unless otherwise specified by any written agreement between the operator of the crematory facility or funeral establishment and the person or entity requesting the cremation of human remains, any cremated human remains unclaimed one hundred eighty (180) calendar days from the date of cremation, may be interred, entombed, or inurned by the operator of the crematory facility, and a record of the disposition of such unclaimed cremated human remains shall be made available by the operator of the crematory facility or funeral establishment for inspection on weekdays between the hours of eight o’clock a.m. (8:00 a.m.) and four-thirty p.m. (4:30 p.m.).
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