Definition
A graveyard is a place set aside for the interment of dead bodies. In legal usage, the term is broadly synonymous with cemetery and burial ground, though statutes in some jurisdictions have imposed minimum-occupancy thresholds to distinguish a graveyard from a mere private burial plot — Black's 2nd Ed. references statutory definitions requiring the burial of six or more persons before a site qualifies.
The term carries two distinct legal applications:
1. GRAVEYARD (as burial ground): A tract of land dedicated to the interment of human remains, whether associated with a religious institution, municipality, or private cemetery corporation. Legal significance attaches primarily in property law (dedication, abandonment, easement of sepulture), land use and zoning law, and statutes governing disinterment and the protection of burial sites.
2. GRAVEYARD INSURANCE: A term of art in insurance law describing a category of fraudulently obtained life insurance policies. Historically applied to schemes in which policies were taken out — through impersonation, falsified applications, or procurement by persons with no insurable interest — on the lives of infants, very elderly persons, or individuals in terminal stages of disease, with the expectation of imminent death and quick claims. The phrase reflects the predatory and speculative character of the practice rather than any neutral industry classification.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A tract of land in which the dead are buried; also used figuratively for a final storage place for things no longer useful, and in various informal or game-specific senses.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A yard or enclosure for the interment of the dead; a cemetery.
The common and legal meanings of graveyard as a burial ground are largely aligned, and no meaningful gap exists there. The legal term of significance is graveyard insurance, which has no common-language counterpart and no longer appears as an industry-recognized term — researchers encountering it in historical legal sources should treat it as a period descriptor for insurance fraud schemes, not a formal policy classification.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
GRAVEYARD INSURANCE: The historically documented subtype with independent legal significance. Characterized by: (a) procurement of a life insurance policy on a life in which the procuring party has no legitimate insurable interest; (b) use of impersonation, false application, or other fraudulent means to obtain the policy; and (c) targeting of insureds with high near-term mortality — infants, the very elderly, or the terminally ill. Courts treated such policies as void for want of insurable interest or as against public policy.
Why It Matters in Research
The term graveyard in historical legal sources most often arises in one of three research contexts, and conflating them produces errors.
First, property and land-use disputes: Graveyards generate litigation over dedication (when does private land become irrevocably committed to burial use?), abandonment (can a cemetery be legally vacated and the land repurposed?), and easements of sepulture (the right of family members to visit and maintain graves). Statutory definitions matter here — a site that qualifies as a graveyard under a jurisdiction's threshold rule may carry perpetual-use restrictions that an ordinary parcel does not.
Second, graveyard insurance fraud: This appears primarily in late 19th and early 20th century case law and insurance treatises. Researchers working in that period should watch for it as an index of the broader insurable interest doctrine. The practice was one of the catalysts for legislative tightening of insurable interest requirements across American jurisdictions. It will not appear in modern insurance materials under this name but its doctrinal residue is present in every state's insurable interest statute.
Third, burial ground protection statutes: Modern research may involve federal and state laws protecting Native American burial sites (notably the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), historic cemetery preservation statutes, and local ordinances. These modern frameworks rarely use the word graveyard, preferring cemetery or burial ground — a researcher using graveyard as a search term in modern statutory databases may miss directly relevant material.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) gives a serviceable but minimal entry. It correctly identifies graveyard and cemetery as functionally equivalent and notes the statutory minimum-occupancy approach without endorsing any single threshold as universal. The entry on graveyard insurance is notably compressed — characterizing it simply as insurance "fraudulently obtained" on high-mortality lives — and does not engage with the insurable interest doctrine that courts used to void such policies. This reflects Black's 2nd Ed.'s general tendency to define by description rather than by doctrinal analysis.
What Black's 2nd Ed. does not address: the property law dimensions of graveyard dedication and abandonment, the religious and municipal distinctions between different types of burial grounds, or the procedural mechanisms for lawful disinterment. Researchers should not treat Black's entry as a guide to the full legal significance of the term.
Jurisdictional Note
Statutory definitions of graveyard and cemetery vary by state, and the minimum-burial thresholds referenced in Black's are not uniform. Some states distinguish between public cemeteries, private cemeteries, and family burial plots with different regulatory regimes for each. Researchers working on property disputes involving small or family graveyards should check the controlling state statute for definitional thresholds before applying general cemetery case law.