Upgrading Linux kernel without installing grub dependencies?

I installed Ubuntu 16.04 in a system that already uses rEFInd for booting. After installation, I removed all grub-related packages. However, each time a new kernel release comes out, it tries to install some grub dependencies that I don't need because I don't have grub installed to start with. Here's the commands I'm using:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
...
Fetched 306 kB in 0s (350 kB/s)    
Reading package lists... Done
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  linux-headers-generic linux-signed-generic linux-signed-image-generic

So after that I try with a dist-upgrade:

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgradeReading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  grub-common grub-gfxpayload-lists grub-pc grub-pc-bin grub2-common
  linux-headers-4.4.0-72 linux-headers-4.4.0-72-generic
  linux-image-4.4.0-72-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-72-generic
  linux-signed-image-4.4.0-72-generic os-prober
The following packages will be upgraded:
  linux-headers-generic linux-signed-generic linux-signed-image-generic
3 upgraded, 11 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 71.8 MB/71.8 MB of archives.
After this operation, 314 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

I tried upgrading anyways and removing the grub packages afterwards, however, the package manager fails when configuring and installing grub-pc, just like in this thread.

Is there any way I can upgrade the Kernel without installing those grub dependencies?

After checking the dependencies for linux-headers-generic, linux-signed-generic and linux-signed-image-generic. I saw that none of them depends on grub. So a simple hold using apt-mark to ignore all grub-related packages fixed the issue for me:

$ sudo apt-mark hold grub* grub*:i386

dist-upgrade now ignores grub.