Diamond Dad
April 4, 2007
The woman claims that her father told her before his death from cancer last year that he wanted to be immortalized as a diamond but the late man's mother disputed her granddaughter's claim, saying he had wanted the urn of his ashes to be buried in a cemetery.
"My father told me in November before he died that he wanted to become a diamond. His intentions should prevail," the daughter said.
Her grandmother, 86, disagreed, and sought an injunction to stop the cemetery releasing the funerary urn to a Swiss diamond laboratory.
The technique for turning the dead's ashes into "memorial" diamonds originated in the United States but the practice is becoming popular in parts of Europe.
The ashes are placed in a press under intense pressure and heat, replicating the forces that create a natural diamond, over a period of several months. Synthetic diamonds have been manufactured from carbon since the mid-1950s. The process costs around $17,000.
Diamonds not the court's best friend
The court said the daughter's views on the care of the remains took precedence over the wishes of the dead man's mother but ruled that any decision had to be in accordance with the expressed wishes of the deceased.
Testimony from the man's brother-in-law who visited a family grave with him shortly before his death from cancer last year indicated he did not wish to be turned into a diamond. The deceased allegedly remarked that he too would soon be buried there, casting doubt on his daughter's claim.
Judges said that in the absence of written instructions, they preferred to believe the man's preferences were conventional.
Wishes went with him to the grave
"With such an exotic form of interment, and one that is illegal in Germany, there is an onus to prove that the deceased really wanted this," the court said in its judgement.
The ashes remain in the custody of the court until the conclusion of all legal action. The two women have refused to negotiate and the daughter may make an appeal.
Citizens in other countries face no such restrictions. Legendary Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards claimed this week that he had mixed his late father's with cocaine and snorted them during a drug binge in 2002.