## Facts

- A small burial ground (Roberts Cemetery) existed within a larger tract that Frank C. Mingledorff purchased in 1972.
- The cemetery contained numerous marked graves dating back decades, including members of the Crum and Daughtry families and related local families.
- For many years, family members used the site for burials and regularly visited, marked, and maintained the graves.
- Mingledorff bought the property knowing the graves were present, but assumed there would be few or no additional burials.
- After the purchase, Mingledorff attempted to restrict the area available for burials and to limit control and access by those associated with the cemetery.
- Trustees of an unincorporated voluntary association formed to protect the cemetery sought a declaratory judgment establishing cemetery rights, while Mingledorff counterclaimed to quiet title and remove any claimed cemetery-related encumbrance.

## Issues

1. Whether longstanding use of a burial ground with owners’ consent established a dedication or “set apart” cemetery tract creating an easement or other enforceable property interest.
2. Whether descendants and family members of those interred held enforceable rights to continued burial (while space remained), reasonable access, and maintenance/enclosure of the cemetery.
3. Whether the trustees of a voluntary unincorporated association had standing to seek declaratory relief, and whether the landowner could quiet title free of cemetery claims.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed the final declaratory judgment and adopted the trial court’s written opinion.
- The court held the cemetery area had been set apart by prior owners’ acts and longstanding burial use, creating an easement for cemetery purposes.
- The easement included rights for existing graves and for future burials of descendants and family members of those already interred, so long as space was available.
- The judgment recognized related rights to access from the nearest public road and to enclose and properly maintain the cemetery.
- The trustees could assert and protect these rights on behalf of the affected families.
- The landowner’s quiet-title counterclaim failed because title remained burdened by the cemetery easement.

## Legal Principles

- Land intentionally set apart and used as a burial ground over time, with landowners’ consent or acquiescence, may create a cemetery easement or comparable property right benefiting families of the interred.
- A cemetery easement may include: (a) burial rights for descendants and family members while space remains; (b) ingress and egress reasonably necessary to reach the burial ground; and (c) maintenance and protective measures consistent with cemetery use (e.g., markers, enclosure).
- A purchaser who acquires land with notice of an existing burial ground takes the property subject to established cemetery easement rights.
- Declaratory judgment is an appropriate vehicle to declare the parties’ respective rights in land burdened by a cemetery easement and to defeat a quiet-title claim inconsistent with that easement.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed a declaration that a decades-old family cemetery on privately owned land constituted an easement binding the current owner, protecting descendants’ rights to burial (while space remains) and to access, enclose, and maintain the cemetery, and rejecting the owner’s attempt to quiet title free of those rights.


Mingledorff v. Crum, 388 So. 2d 632 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1st Dist. 1980)