What can my family do if a funeral home mishandled our loved one's remains?

What the law protects

Texas gives the next of kin, in a statutory order of priority beginning with the surviving spouse and children, the right to control the disposition of a loved one's remains, and the common law has long recognized what it calls a quasi-property right in the body of the deceased: not property in any commercial sense, but the family's protected interest in seeing their person treated with care and laid to rest as directed. The cases that violate it are the ones families carry forever: the wrong body presented or buried, a cremation performed without the authorized person's consent, remains lost, misidentified, or commingled, decomposition from failed refrigeration or embalming, graves disturbed, instructions ignored.

What the Texas Supreme Court settled

For years, funeral defendants argued that only the person who signed the contract could sue for the anguish these failures cause. In 2018, the Texas Supreme Court rejected that: the relationship between those handling a decedent's remains and the next of kin is special even without a contract, and mental anguish damages, the heart of these cases, are recoverable for negligent mishandling of a corpse. The anguish must be genuine and substantial, proven through the family's own testimony about what the failure did to their grief and their daily lives, and Texas juries have shown they understand, returning verdicts in recent years reaching seven figures. Worth knowing: the funeral industry asked the 2025 Legislature to cap these damages, and the bill did not pass, though the effort tells you how seriously the industry takes this exposure.

The two tracks, and what to preserve

A civil claim and a regulatory complaint run on separate tracks, and a family can pursue both: the Texas Funeral Service Commission licenses and disciplines funeral establishments, and its complaint process addresses the provider's license while the civil case addresses the family's losses. For either, preserve everything now, the contract and every signed authorization, all correspondence and texts, photographs, the names of every staff member dealt with, and a written timeline made while memories are fresh, because these cases are proven with paper the family already holds and details that blur precisely because the season was unbearable.

At the family's pace

No family should have to become investigators of their own grief, and there is no urgency script at the bottom of this page. When you are ready to understand whether what happened supports a claim, Silver Key Law will listen first and explain plainly, in a consultation that is free, private, and without obligation.

Injured in Arizona? Some rules on this page are Texas-specific. Arizona differs on points that change outcomes, including pure comparative fault and government-claim deadlines. See our Arizona answers or call (888) 508-6967.

Related: Mishandling of Human Remains · Contact Us · Submit Your Case · All Common Questions

This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes depend on facts; talk to a lawyer about yours.