Yes, you can still buy it. An old family cemetery doesn't stop a sale in Alabama. The graves stay where they are unless they're moved the way state law allows. Family members and descendants keep a legal right of reasonable access to visit and care for them. You can build on the rest of the tract, so plan the house, the drive, and any clearing with the cemetery in mind.
A Cemetery Turns Up in the Deed, on the Survey, or Under the Trees
Our founder grew up riding along with his father, who sold land for a long time. Many of those tracts were wooded. An old home place out there can leave very little behind, and a few stones under the leaves are easy to walk past. So look in four places before closing.
Start with the deed. It can carve a burial plot out of a sale with "less and except" language. It can also reserve a way in to reach one. If an earlier owner excepted the cemetery, that patch may not be part of what you're buying. How to look up the deed covers where to find those phrases.
Then the survey. Alabama's survey standards have the surveyor show a cemetery if they see it or are told about it. A surveyor who never hears about a plot in the back corner may never draw it. Our survey note covers what else the map has to carry.
Ask the seller in writing whether anyone is buried on the land, and whether anyone comes to visit. A seller whose family held the tract for decades usually knows.
Then walk the whole tract, edges included. Look for a fence around nothing, a row of upright fieldstones, carved markers, or sunken spots in a line. The Alabama Historical Commission's rules define a cemetery as "a place of burial for human remains with or without markings or indications." Some graves leave no sign at all.
The commission also keeps the Alabama Historic Cemetery Register, with a county-by-county list on its cemetery program page. A small family plot may not be on it, but it's a quick check.
The Graves Stay Where They Are
Buying the land doesn't make the graves yours to clear. Alabama's burial law, Section 13A-7-23.1, makes it a Class A misdemeanor to willfully or maliciously injure, deface, remove, or destroy "any tomb, monument, gravestone," or other memorial of the dead. The same goes for "any fence, railing, curb, or any enclosure" built to protect them.
The list reaches past the stones. It also covers trees, shrubs, plants, flowers, and decorations "within any cemetery or graveyard." A clearing crew with a mulcher needs to know where the fence is.
Cleanup can need a permit, too. The commission's cemetery permit requirements apply to cemeteries at least 75 years old. They list "major removal or cutting of trees, shrubs, flowers, or other plants" as work that needs a permit. Cutting the grass and general maintenance don't.
Disturbing the remains themselves is more serious. Desecrating a grave and invading or mutilating the remains is a Class C felony under subsection (b).
The section names who those rules don't apply to. Those exceptions cover a person with a commission permit, anyone running a cemetery under standard rules, and anyone "otherwise authorized by law" to disturb a grave.
Families Keep a Right to Visit, on Reasonable Terms
Alabama wrote this down in 2007. Section 35-1-4 says owners and lessees of private land with a cemetery, graves, or burial sites "shall have a duty to allow ingress and egress." Ingress and egress means getting in and getting out. The statute lists three groups who get that access:
- family members, friends, or descendants of the people buried there
- any cemetery plot owner
- anyone doing genealogical, historical, or cultural research "who has given reasonable notice to the owner of record or to the lessees, or both"
The access has limits. It must be reasonable, and it covers visiting graves, maintaining the graves or the cemetery, doing that research, or, for a plot owner, burying someone in the plot. So a family plot with owned spaces can still take a burial.
The landowner gets some say. You can set "the frequency, hours, and duration of the access." You can also pick the route, if no traditional route is obviously visible on the property. Every one of those choices has to be reasonable for the purposes the law lists.
Visitors carry responsibility too. Anyone who comes in under the statute has to avoid damaging the land or the graves, and is liable to the owner for damage they cause. The section also shields the owner and lessee from liability arising out of that access, absent gross negligence or willful misconduct.
Note the word "lessees." If you lease the hunting rights to a club, the duty reaches the club as well. Put the cemetery and its route in the lease.
Moving Old Graves Takes a State Permit
It's easy to assume an owner can have old graves moved to a church cemetery in town. In Alabama, moving older graves usually means a permit from the Alabama Historical Commission. Section 13A-7-23.1(d) directs the commission to write rules and issue permits to people who "seek to restore, preserve, or relocate human burial remains."
Those rules are Chapter 460-X-10 of the Alabama Administrative Code, revised December 15, 2024. Four points matter to a buyer.
- If every burial involved has been in the ground less than 75 years, no commission permit is needed. The rule adds that this doesn't excuse anyone from other requirements of state law.
- If any burial is 75 years old or older, or its date can't be determined, a specific permit from the commission is required.
- A relocation application needs a research design from a qualified bioarchaeologist, or from an archaeologist working with a human osteologist or forensic anthropologist.
- For work that disturbs or moves remains, a final report gives the place, the date, and what became of the remains.
The commission's program page says it "issues permits for substantial work," including relocation of human remains in cemeteries at least 75 years old. A family plot from an old home place can easily pass that line.
Price the tract with the graves staying put. A plan to move them is a plan to wait on a state permit.
Plan the House, the Drive, and the Clearing Around It
Alabama's access law doesn't set a building distance in feet. Ask the county planning office whether a local rule does. Can I build what I want on this tract covers how to find the rules that apply to a parcel.
Even with no setback on the books, leave room. The fence or the visible stones may not mark the edge, because unmarked graves can sit outside them. A house pad, septic field, or pond dug right against the fence takes that risk.
Work out the visitors' route early. The owner's right to pick the route applies only when no traditional route is obviously visible. If families have always come up an old woods road from the county road, expect that road to stay in use. Keep the driveway, the house, and the yard off it. Visitors who never pass the kitchen window suit everyone.
Know the discovery rule, too. The commission's rules say anyone who learns of human remains on private land "shall notify law enforcement immediately." If the find happens during construction, logging, or farming, stop work in that area and protect the site. That matters on a timber tract, where a harvest can bring the first heavy equipment in years. What is the timber worth covers the harvest side.
Get the Cemetery on Paper Before You Close
- Tell the surveyor about the cemetery in writing. Ask them to locate the fence, the visible graves, and the access route, and show all three on the map.
- Ask the closing attorney or title company whether the cemetery ground is part of the sale, or was excepted in an earlier deed.
- Ask the closing attorney whether the cemetery and the visitors' route should be described in your deed.
- Make the offer contingent on a survey that shows the cemetery where your plans can live with it. What your offer should be contingent on covers how to write that.
LandScout's parcel view carries a Cemetery Nearby flag from OpenStreetMap. It counts mapped cemeteries within three miles of the parcel's center. A family plot under the trees may not be mapped at all, so the flag is a screen and never a substitute for walking the ground.
LandScout tracks 16,727 undeveloped parcels in Shelby County, and the Shelby County page has the county's numbers from the October 1, 2026 export.
The pricing page lists what each LandScout plan includes.
The graves were there first, so plan the house around them.