Can you be buried with your pet in Texas? What to know about whole-family cemeteries
Many Americans consider their pets to be part of the family.
It can be hard to imagine life without them, which is why some people store their pets' ashes or bury them in the backyard when it's time to say goodbye.
But can you be buried with your pet in Texas?
Here's what the law says.
Can you be buried with your pet in Texas?
There are no legal restrictions that forbid burying someone with their pet's cremated ashes in Texas.
The state has also supported whole family cemeteries, which allow the burial of a pet's remains in their entirety within a family cemetery plot.
However, in a 2012 legal opinion , the Texas Department of Banking expressed some opposition to this idea, stating that pets may not be buried in a dedicated cemetery, according to attorney D. Scott Curry.
In its legal opinion, the department held that allowing pets to be buried in a dedicated cemetery "construes chapters 711 and 712 of the department's code to provide for the interment of humans alone in cemeteries."
The department's legal opinion came in reaction to one that was issued in 1993 by the Texas Attorney General's office. It concluded that there was no clear-cut rule banning pet burial in a cemetery designated for that purpose.
The Attorney General's office noted that the Texas Health and Safety Code gives a commissioner's court in a county with less than 8,200 residents the authority to decide whether or not non-human animals may be buried in a county-run cemetery.
"Nothing in chapter 711 expressly prohibits the burial of non humans in a cemetery," the office said .
Are there any whole-family cemeteries in Texas?
According to the Green Pet Burial Society, Texas is home to one whole family cemetery .
It's the Eloise Woods Community Natural Burial Park, located in Cedar Creek in Bastrop County in Central Texas.
The cemetery describes itself as a sustainable natural burial park for people and pets.
It has a separate pet section called Rainbow Bridge Garden, in addition to the family grounds.
Has it ever been normal to be buried with your pet?
Data shows that the oldest known example of a person and a dog being buried together is from around 14,000 years ago , in Germany.
Archaeologists also found that of the 161 persons discovered buried between the third and the first century B.C.E., 16 of them had animal remains with them , such as dogs, horses, pigs, chickens and cows.
In the U.S., there are no national regulations governing the burial of pets. That is mostly governed by state and local legislation.
There are only a handful of states that have specific laws allowing pets to be buried with owners in 2024. Those are:
