Bains v Arsalan & Anor (Funeral Arrangements) [2026] EWHC 1597 (Fam), Peel J 23 June 2026. Judgment here
What happens when the person ordinarily entitled to arrange a child’s funeral is the person convicted of murdering her?
That was the issue Peel J had to consider in this case looking at the relationship between the forfeiture rule, the statutory power to pass over a prospective administrator and the court’s inherent jurisdiction.
The facts
Harleen, who had been born into the Sikh faith, was two months old when she died from catastrophic injuries. Her (unmarried) parents had been the only persons present when she was injured. Her mother, who had sole parental responsibility, gave what she later admitted was a false count that Harleen had wriggled out of her arms and fallen. After Harleen’s father took his own life her mother changed her account to allege that he had assaulted both her and Harleen, knocked her unconscious and killed Harleen.
Six years after Harleen’s death her mother was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 19 years. Harleen’s body had meanwhile remained unburied under the responsibility of the Coroner’s Office…
It appears that shortly after the conviction a charitable bereavement service, was contacted by the Coroner. Harleen’s mother had by then converted to Islam and, from prison, she gave formal written instructions to the service to carry out the funeral arrangements for an Islamic burial. The next day the Coroner issued a Burial Order authorising release of the body.
When Harleen’s paternal grandmother learned of this plan she obtained an urgent High Court injunction preventing the burial and sought letters of administration so she could arrange a Sikh funeral for her granddaughter.
Who has the right to decide?
There is no property in a corpse,[1] although the deceased’s personal representatives have the duty to arrange its proper disposal. Where there is no executor, that responsibility falls to the administrators.
Ordinarily, Harleen’s mother would have had priority for a grant of letters administration under rule 22 of the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987. However s.116 Senior Courts Act 1981 allows the High Court to pass over the person otherwise entitled where “special circumstances” make another appointment necessary or expedient.
Peel J however initially accepted a more fundamental and simpler argument – applying the forfeiture rule which precludes a person who has unlawfully killed another from acquiring a benefit in consequence of the killing he held that the mother’s conviction prevented her from benefiting from Harleen’s estate.
Section 116 gives the same answer
However, adding a belt to his braces, assuming the mother retained the right to seek administration, Peel J explained that he would still have passed her over if the forfeiture rule was inapposite and he had needed to decide the case under s 116.
After a helpful survey of a number of recent s.116 cases the relevant jurisprudence was clear – there were a breadth of circumstances to which the court may have regard when applying s.116 where no one factor automatically took precedence over another. The assessment was broad and fact-sensitive. Biological relationship and parental responsibility may carry considerable weight, but they do not confer automatic priority, and particularly not in a case where other powerful factors are in play.
Weighing up all circumstances the mother’s biological relationship, parental responsibility and wish for an Islamic burial were outweighed by her murder of Harleen; Harleen’s Sikh identity throughout her brief life; her father’s Sikh faith and expressed wishes; and the paternal family’s wish to arrange a Sikh funeral. Those circumstances justified appointment of the paternal grandmother under s.116 in preference to her mother.
Although it was barely necessary to say so, Peel J remarked that he would have reached the same conclusion under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court.
Letters of administration were therefore granted to the paternal grandmother to enable her to make the funeral arrangements for Harleen in accordance with the Sikh faith, culture and tradition.
Comment
The result here is hardly surprising – allowing a murderer, in opposition to other blood relatives, to decide what happens to the body of a child they have killed must be wrong whichever legal approach one takes. Consequently coroner who has completed their investigation and is able to release a body should perhaps proceed cautiously before readily releasing it to someone known to be complicit in their death, particularly if competing claims to the body have arisen.
It is the function of the High Court, not the coroner, to resolve competing private-law claims to control a funeral. But if the coroner knows that such a dispute exists, the Chief Coroner’s guidance is that a short delay of ten days before release is reasonable to allow the parties to apply to obtain an urgent High Court determination. A delay in release is also preferable to placing other family members in the position encountered here, where they had to obtain an urgent injunction after the body had already left the mortuary.
References
[1] Buchanan v Milton [1999] 2 FLR 844 at 845H: