FUNERAL EXPENSES
FUNERAL EXPENSES. Money expended in procuring the interment of a corpse.
2. The person who orders the funeral is responsible personally for the expenses, and if the estate of the deceased should be insolvent, he must lose the amount. But if there are assets sufficient to pay these expenses, the executor or administrator is bound, upon an implied assumpsit, to pay them. 1 Campb. N. P. R. 298; Holt, 309 Com. on Contr. 529; 1 Hawke's R. 394; 13 Vin. Ab. 563.
3. Frequent questions arise as to the amount which is to be allowed to the executor or administrator for such expenses. It is exceedingly difficult to gather from the numerous cases which have been, decided upon this subject, any certain rule. Courts of equity have taken into consideration the circumstances of each case, and when the executors have acted with common prudence and in obedience to the will, their expenses have been allowed. In a case where the testator directed that his remains should be buried at a church thirty miles distant from the place of his death, the sum of sixty pounds sterling was allowed. 3 Atk. 119. In another case, under peculiar circumstances, six hundred pounds were allowed. Preced. in Ch. 29. In a case in Pennsylvania, where the intestate left a considerable estate, and no children, the sum of two hundred and fifty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents was allowed, the greater part of which had been expended in erecting a tombstone over a vault in which the body was interred. 14 Serg. & Rawle, 64.
4. It seems doubtful whether the hushand can call upon the separate personal estate of his wife, to pay her funeral expenses. 6 Madd. R. 90. Vide 2 Bl. Com. 508; Godolph. p. 2 3 Atk. 249 Off. Ex. 174; Bac. Ab. Executors, &c., L 4; Vin. Ab. h. t.