Background: A municipal authority is required to bury any individual for whom nobody has arranged a funeral within 96 hours of their death being reported. This responsibility ensues from the delegated powers as specified in Section 5 (4) of the Funeral Services Act.
The procedure is generally referred to as "social burial". An amendment to the Funeral Services Act, implemented by means of Act No. 193/2017 Coll., amending Act No. 256/2001 Coll., on funeral services and on amendments to some other laws, as amended, and other related legal regulations, introduced a totally new term - proper burial according to local conventions.
Aims: The objective of this monograph is to provide a relevant description of the procedure undertaken by the municipality in response to its obligation to arrange the burial, using the applicable legal regulations and complying with all the relevant legislative requirements and legal regulations of lower legal strength. Methods: Relevant legal documents were identified and arranged with a view to their mutual thematic relationship in the context of the development of the phenomenon referred to as social burial.
The documents were then subjected to qualitative content analysis, used to examine the procedure. Results: The concept of social burial is basically a multidisciplinary issue which, in addition to the Funeral Services Act, involves the stipulations of the Civil Code, the Act on Health Services, and other statutes.
In this respect, the decree of the Ministry for Local Development, which specifies the procedure a municipality should follow in providing proper burial, is no less significant a legal regulation. Conclusion: The monograph was created in order to facilitate the understanding of the issue for everyone concerned.
The practical approach of the text is reflected in its simplified content and phrasing. It is not a legal document and it does not aspire to be a substitute for an annotated wording of the Funeral Services Act.
It does not constitute any formal guidelines, as these can only be issued by the Ministry for Regional Development, which is the central governmental agency with respect to undertaking and has the remit of implementing the Funeral Services Act.[2] Rather than presenting an intricate description of the status quo, the monograph seeks to provide the reader with a straightforward, comprehensible, and clear outline of the current situation. While it can hardly cover all the circumstances which may arise in the event of a burial being arranged by a municipality, the text presents general procedures which are covered in the legal regulations.