A California woman brought along her husband’s ashes when she moved to Hawaii in the late 1960s and asked Williams Mortuary to hold them for safekeeping until she got settled.

But the woman never claimed her husband’s remains, even after the mortuary notified families in 1980 that it was being sold.

This summer — more than 40 years later — funeral director Bill Ami­gone said he got a call from the woman,wanting to know where the ashes were.

The reason for the long delay?

"She got busy because she was raising her young family," he said. "Her husband died young, and she had a hard time dealing with it."

The woman told Ami­gone that she called after reading a June 17 Star-Advertiser story about a woman whose unclaimed remains were retrieved from a Williams Mortuary crypt earlier this year.

Amigone, with what is now Diamond Head Mortuary and Williams Funeral Services, said the ashes had been placed in one of Williams’ two crypts at Oahu Cemetery for unclaimed remains.

While there are similar cases of abandoned remains in Hawaii, there have also been cases in which a body isn’t laid to rest or cremated because of disagreement among family members.

Without clear guidelines, funeral establishments have taken on the burden of storing remains for what can turn out to be years, if not decades. But under a new law funeral homes, mortuaries and crematories are now protected from liability should they choose to dispose of unclaimed bodies.

Until this year Hawaii was one of only two states without a so-called right of disposition law specifying whose wishes take precedence when it comes to decisions about the deceased.

State Sen. Roz Baker (D, West Maui-South Maui), one of the bill’s sponsors, said funeral establishments were often "caught in the middle" because they will often have a contract with somebody who dies with specific instructions, "but when next of kin comes in, they say, ‘No, we don’t want to do it that way.’"

And if there was no clear manner of disposition, "the law said (mortuaries) had to keep them almost indefinitely, which was problematic given the space," she said.

At first Baker said she "didn’t realize it was such a big deal," but the funeral establishments argued it was a problem that needed to be addressed since no regulations existed.

Act 17, signed by Gov. Neil Abercrombie on April 17, provides a clear order of priority and provides legal guidelines that will help avoid or settle disputes among family members who differ on the disposition of the remains.

It provides a lengthy priority list of who can make decisions about what happens with the deceased — at the top of which is anyone designated in writing through a notary.

A good-faith effort must be made to notify those designated by priority, allowing at least five days for a response.

In the absence of connecting with anyone on the list, a funeral establishment can adhere to the wishes of any other person willing to assume responsibility.

Act 17 would have helped in a case involving a common-law couple who had lived together for decades, Ami­gone recalled.

When the wife died, the common-law husband could not legally make any decisions. She was estranged from her two children but was legally married to another man. So the funeral home had to seek authorization from her estranged husband, who lived in another country and whose English was poor.

At times a funeral establishment may be asked to pick up a body, but after doing so the person who made the request or next of kin will not or cannot pay for disposition or can no longer be found.

Amigone recalled the case of a woman who had paid for a funeral plan specifying cremation before she died.

"It was her intent to be cremated," Ami­gone said.

Yet there was still an issue because, before the new law, a spouse or family member had to give authorization for the cremation.

Other than the funeral plan, she had left no written instructions, had no known relatives, no executor or trustee of an estate.

"We needed a family member to authorize it," Ami­gone said.

She had had a girlfriend "but they broke up, and she didn’t have any legal authority to sign it."

Before Act 17 "this would have gone as an unclaimed body," and the mortuary would have received little money for handling the cremation, he said.

THE LAW NOW now allows a funeral home, cemetery, mortuary or crematory to dispose of remains by any legal manner within 60 days.

"Most have a niche or a pauper’s grave where they can store the cremated remains," said David Mori­kami, vice president and operations manager of Leeward Funeral Home.

In terms of who can control the disposition of remains, Mori­kami said the new law is especially helpful in Hawaii where many families are sometimes "spread out across the United States and sometimes foreign countries, which can delay the disposition," especially with cremation.

Since cremation is the most economical option, many families opt to use it, but even when a majority of family members were in agreement, there was often a delay in trying to find everyone.

"You can’t un-cremate a person," Mori­kami said. "Sometimes you have one family member who is estranged. In the past that would hold up the cremation. We still try to contact the person. We do a fair amount of due diligence. We have a wait period. Some mortuaries even go so far as to run an obituary for the person when we don’t have anyone."

He added, "The family wants the closure and wants to move on, but they have to wait to clear legal hurdles." Mori­kami said his funeral home would absorb the cost of holding a body for the lengthy time it would take.

CLIFFORD HOSOI, president of Hosoi Garden Mortuary, said Act 17 would have facilitated efforts to lay to rest Katsu Ishiki, a 96-year-old Okinawan immigrant who died in 1997 with no known survivors.

It took Mac Yona­mine, a member of an Okinawan genealogical club, 13 years before Ishiki was laid to rest at a Buddhist Okinawan temple in Kalihi.

Ishiki’s remains had been placed in a small crypt for the forgotten at Oahu Cemetery until Yona­mine and his club performed an exhaustive search for next of kin and cleared legal hurdles to take possession of the remains.

But Amy Tsuru, a genealogical club member who researched Ishiki’s past and tried to find relatives, said if Act 17 had been in effect earlier, it could have meant Ishiki’s ashes could legally have been "thrown out."

Tsuru said she is not sure the law would benefit those unaware of a family member’s death in Hawaii.

"To me it’s like when you have money and it’s unclaimed, they advertise it," she said. "Same thing. … They (funeral establishments) should do this once, advertise the names they have. You cannot keep storing these ashes."

As for the former California woman who contacted the funeral home about her husband’s cremated remains 40-plus years later, Ami­gone said he directed her to Oahu Cemetery but never learned whether she claimed the remains.

"At least she knows where they are," he said.

Although funeral establishments now have the legal right to properly dispose of unclaimed remains, Ami­gone feels differently.

"I can’t speak for the industry, but on a personal level I wouldn’t just discard them," he said. "It’s just not right. We have the crypt there. At least there’s a place."