A woman has lost a court battle to put her own name on her parents’ headstone as she’s still alive.

A judge said Dr Sandra Marshall, who wanted to put her own name on her parents’ gravestone in a County Durham churchyard, couldn’t have her name on the headstone as “the memorial is not to her”.

Dr Marshall was also told by a court she couldn’t have 79 words on the headstone as it would make it “over-crowded and cramped”.

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And the judge blocked her from using the word “passed” instead of “died” in the tribute.

The obscure case also saw Marshall told she couldn’t erect the gravestone she’d already had made because it was made of Corian, which is primarily used to make kitchen worktops.

Adrian Iles, Chancellor of the Diocese of Durham, in his role as a judge of the Church of England’s Consistory Court said the material the memorial was made from, was “not natural”.

He also said: “The memorial is not to her, and her name should not appear on it.”

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The doctor had been granted permission for her mother, Freda Nora Marshall’s, ashes to be buried in the grave which contains her father and grandfather’s remains at St Cuthbert’s churchyard at Etherley, near Bishop Auckland.

But she also sought permission for the new memorial with longer wording to record where her mother’s ashes had been buried.

It comes after an investigation into a shocking mix-up exposed by The Northern Echo which saw a County Durham family spend 17 years visiting the wrong grave, after their father had been buried in the wrong place.

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The Bell family only discovered the distressing blunder, which the church has now said was caused by a ‘perfect storm’ of errors, after the death of their mum who wanted to be buried alongside her doting husband.

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