Now there are rules for Scattering Someone's Ashes?

Somebody you love dies, and it's awful. What's worse, sometimes you're even put in charge of figuring out how to deal with their remains. It's sad, it's stressful, it's a huge responsibility — and it's unfortunately complicated. Case in point: Even if your departed chose to have their remains cremated and scattered in a special place they loved in life, there are laws regulating where you can dump out an urn full of human ashes.

Of course, most people don't know this, or even consider the laws when dealing with something so personal. Because the popularity of cremation is relatively new and the laws aren't often enforced, the laws about getting rid of ashes aren't as widely known and respected as, say, traffic laws.

But more people are choosing cremation all the time — according to the Cremation Association of North America, fewer than 4 percent of Americans chose to be cremated in 1958, but that number's expected to be around 50 percent by 2018. For centuries, cremation wasn't really done in Western countries because many churches believed it conflicted with religious doctrine — the Catholic Church, for instance, prohibited cremation until 1963, and these days the Vatican allows it under most circumstances, but insists the ashes be buried, not scattered.

But many people ask that their ashes be scattered in a place they loved after death, and while there's a greater amount of human bone ash being scattered around than ever before, it doesn't occur to most people that pouring their grandpa's ashes in his favorite fishing river could be illegal.

Although no enforcement agency exists to ride around busting people, most states have their own scattering laws, the particulars of which can vary wildly. And some federal laws take precedence over those state laws. For instance, even though the state of Texas says you can scatter ashes in a public waterway, the federal Clean Water Act prohibits scattering human ashes into freshwater bodies like lakes, rivers and streams — though in most cases it's possible to obtain permits from both the federal and state agency.