Once upon a time, a news that "20 years after the old man was buried in the ground, his children received a notice from the cemetery management department that the ashes would be removed if they did not renew the fee", which spread among the people.
Many people who have never experienced similar incidents are shocked that the "feng shui treasure land" that people spend tens of thousands or even tens of or two hundred thousand yuan to buy for their families is not a freehold property?
Co-authoring and paying such a large sum of money is just "rent", and if the lease is not renewed on time, the deceased relatives are likely to fall into a "homeless" situation.
As soon as the news came out, it naturally led to a wide debate, so is it legal for the purpose of managing one party? Where does this "20-year" period come from?
In China's funeral culture, ancient Chinese generally used earth burial. Because the ancients paid attention to "entering the earth for peace", burial usually means the end of a life, and it is also the final destination of most people.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, burial, as a part of the feudal tradition, has gradually lost its living space. In order to abandon the relatively backward funeral system, and considering the problems of land occupation and environmental protection, cremation gradually emerged.
In 1985, China promulgated the Interim Measures for Funeral Management, which stipulates that cremation should be implemented in large and medium-sized cities, especially for densely populated, cramped vacant land and leading economic levels.
In that era, cremation became almost an important indicator of urban and rural markers. It has to be said that this regulation alleviated the problem of insufficient cultivated land in China in a certain sense, and also laid the foundation for the widespread implementation of cremation in the future.
However, with the development of the times, the improvement of people's living standards, and the increasing convenience of transportation, the rural areas around the city have been able to develop. The lot of vacant land has also opened the eyes of many people to an opportunity to make money.
Perhaps because the Chinese still hope that after the death of their loved ones, there can be a place where they can pay regular memorials, even if many cities have popularized cremation, it has not affected the sales of cemeteries around the city in the slightest.
With the gradual aging of our country, real estate is also developing rapidly during the same period, and the value of land seems to have become the most valuable resource in a few years, which is not only reflected in housing prices, but also in the increase in cemetery **.
Nowadays, the cemetery around many big cities, or a cemetery in some beautiful cemeteries, has exceeded the average price of real estate in most second-tier cities.
This undoubtedly increases the burden on the less affluent, but it is even more unacceptable that the cemetery, which was originally purchased at a high cost, is told decades later that the cemetery will have to be paid.
This practice of the cemetery management agency has naturally aroused consumer disgust, and some people have even simply sued the relevant companies in court, so is their practice legal, and what is the basis for the "20 years" period in their mouths?
China's cemetery land is mainly divided into two parts, of which as a public welfare cemetery, usually as urban and rural public infrastructure, by the local collective is jointly responsible, the object is mainly the future of residents in the jurisdiction.
However, this form is mainly concentrated in rural and township areas, and the main advantage of these areas is undoubtedly the abundance of land resources. As a cemetery, in terms of fees, it also aims to keep costs and serve neighbors.
On the other hand, there is a commercial cemetery, which as the name suggests, is a form of business that leases land to individuals and uses it to bury the ashes of their family members in exchange for profit.
Because the first of the commercial cemetery is not affected by collective pricing, but with the adjustment of the market economy, when the land is high, coupled with the Chinese people's obsession with "thick burial", it leads to the feeling that people now feel "can't afford to die".
However, as we all know, China is a country where land is not privatized, and from this analysis, we can conclude that in commercial cemeteries, neither the builder of the cemetery nor the manager of the cemetery has the ownership of the relevant land.
Since there is no ownership, what is the legal basis for them to charge consumers a fee? According to the relevant provisions of China's property law and land management law, we can see the clues.
From a legal point of view, land use rights can be divided into two types: property rights and creditor's rights. The relevant right to use the cemetery in the relevant case can be directly understood as the right to use the cemetery.
There is a voice that the right to use cemeteries is juxtaposed with land use rights such as land contract management rights, building land use rights, and homestead use rights, and exists as an independent and effective form of property rights.
However, this view currently only exists in theoretical conceptions, and is not recorded as a clear legal provision in the Property Law. This situation also makes the current management and definition of cemetery tenure ambiguous.
It is precisely for this reason that China lacks clear norms and guidelines in terms of the right to use and the regulation of fees for business purposes. As with the "20 years" authority mentioned in previous news, there are specious contradictions in this figure.
According to the different nature of land use, the term of use of residential land stipulated by Chinese law is generally 70 years, while the term of use for industrial land and land for education and culture has a period of 50 years, and the term for comprehensive land is also 50 years.
Obviously, this period is different from the 20-year period of use of the cemetery mentioned above, which is more like a cemetery construction unit, or a maintenance and management cycle agreement between the cemetery management unit and the grave buyer.
The term 20 years first appeared in the relevant documents issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 1997, but this document stipulates that the space for the storage of cemeteries and ashes should have a service life, and in principle, the term is 20 years.
It can be seen that this relevant suggestion is the basis for the establishment of a fee preservation period for commercial cemeteries. However, due to the overly brief description of the relevant documents, there have been many controversies in the subsequent implementation process.
For example, after the expiration of the use period, the next treatment plan is not mentioned. There is also no indication of how consumers need to renew their fees, and whether there will be extensions if the renewal exceeds the time limit.
The lack of clarity in the legal provisions also provides more flexibility for operators of commercial cemeteries. Therefore, when consumers are faced with some unreasonable requirements from the other party, it is difficult to protect themselves with legal requirements.
So how should we improve the status quo and make the funeral industry develop more healthily?
From the above legal analysis, it can be seen that the relationship between the current cemetery operator and the consumer is similar to that between the property manager and the resident. Residents maintain their right to use and store the cemetery by paying a regular management fee.
In order to solve the frequent disputes caused by the hesitation and unclear responsibilities between managers and consumers in the operation of cemeteries, the next step should be to make more clear provisions on the relevant processes at the level of laws and regulations.
First of all, in terms of service life, it should be clearly defined. For example, the 20-year time limit commonly used in the industry today requires the cemetery operator to sign a clear contract with the consumer.
In addition, it is necessary to clearly stipulate in the contract that a certain period of grace and sufficient transition period shall be given when the renewal of the right of use expires, and when the renewal of the contract by the consumer is not timely. This time limit could be tentatively set at about one year.
Secondly, for special circumstances such as the transfer of cemeteries, it is also necessary to clarify the transfer process on the basis of signing a formal contract, and strictly supervise the identity of the transferee to protect the vital interests of consumers.
Legally, the right to use cemeteries should be included in the part of commercial building land in the provisions of the Property Law as soon as possible. Only by giving a clear definition of commercial cemeteries can the industry be more standardized.
It is worth mentioning that even if the consumer pays the fee on time at the end of each term, the life of the cemetery as a business land is 50 to 70 years. In other words, when the land use right expires, consumers still need to face a new burial problem.
Whether the land expires and the operator changes to another development site, it not only means that the previous consumer spending is unsustainable, but also the disadvantages of finding a new cemetery must be considered.
Under the current land use trend, the demand for arable land in China in the future will inevitably increase, which also means that the land resources that can be used as cemeteries in the future will become more and more precious over time.
So how can we solve the problem of less and less land? It can be bold here that in the future, due to population migration or other reasons, some cemeteries have not been renewed or worshiped for a long time.
These cemeteries will be reused, and the ashes from the original cemeteries will also be sent to mass burial sites for centralized burial, or stored in public ash depository. The vacated space will be used to build new tombs.
With the intensification of China's aging population, the funeral industry will become more and more important in the future, and the demand for cemeteries will become more and more intense. It is foreseeable that in the future, the use of cemeteries** will be higher and higher, and the service life will be shorter and shorter.
Under the influence of such objective conditions, there is no doubt that China's traditional funeral culture will change accordingly, and it is very likely that people in the future will no longer be entangled in whether they can "enter the soil for peace" after death.
The emergence and development of cultural traditions are inevitably closely related to the level of contemporary economic development, and they cannot exist in isolation from the objective environmental conditions. Just as the thousand-year-old burial culture has been replaced, the future era will also emerge a funeral culture that is more in line with the trend.