Legally dead???

With the passing of Steve Fausett and the courts declaring him dead, and with another local man disappearing,.....I was wondering what "legally dead" actually means? If Joe Blow decides that he's tired of his nagging wife and ungrateful kids and one day just packs up his car and leaves,....he has disappeared as far as his family is concerned. They wait around for a few months and when Joe never comes home, they have to start thinking about the legalities. They get a lawyer and go after Joe's bank account and other valuables,....but can they have Joe declared "legally dead" without any evidence of foul play? Joe could be alive and well, working at a job and having taxes taken out of his check and stashed away in the Social Security system like every worker until he retires. Therefore, the courts could not declare him legally dead because he is still contributing to the Social Security system whether his relatives know about it or not.

From what I've heard, the Social Security system can NOT be used by the courts to locate people; it's a violation of the law. Poor Joe's family may be crying in their beer because he is gone, but the Social Security system knows exactly where he is because they are receiving deductions from his paycheck every payday.

What's the scoop? Can a family declare their missing relative "legally dead" even though he may be alive and well and wants to remain "disappeared"?

 

I believe that's called insurance fraud
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legally_dead

 

I don't know, but I don't believe a family can. I would assume that once they did, the govt. or whoever, would then have to actually look around for Joe instead of just saying, "Ok. He's dead." And if Joe has a job elsewhere, I would also assume such a job would then go on his records or whatever, letting the govt. know he's currently employed by such and such. And I esp. wouldn't think he couldn't be pronounced dead if his social security is still being given money. I mean, the govt. wouldn't be using Social Security to locate him, just to see if he's actually alive or not.

Honestly, that's just how I would picture it. My knowledge of the courts and that is little mainly because even I get frustrated having to deal with my own problems through them, which would lead me to think, "Why would I ever want to go through this with other folks?"

 

It seems like a circular situation. Let us say a father or husband simply moves and doesn't want to be found. For sake of simplicity he doesn't have life insurance, so no fraud there. But as a father or husband, Social Security would pay benefits potentially to his minor children and/or spouse. That is where the SSA would see he was paying taxes and say "wait a minute". The other scenario would be that he disappears and goes completely underground, then he can never return or else during the time of his disappearance he would have been committing fraud to the SSA to the benefit of his family. So once "dead" you have to stay "dead". I'm not sure what happens when you actually pass away and people wonder who this corpse was though.

I suppose a person could simply leave his life and be declared dead, but he would have to have no debt, no life insurance, and no dependants/spouse. But then why would he leave, he has nothing and nobody? He wouldn't have anyone notice he left anyway.

On the other hand, if a person really decided to leave their life and family that much, I suppose concern about their welfare or their inadvertent fraud would be of secondary importance. They just would have to know that they would have to forever stay in the black market US economy or out of the country.

BTW, isn't it strange that they never found Fausett's plane?

 

In the case of Steve Fausett they went before a judge to get a court order to grant him as "legally dead" or death in absentia. In some cases it may take longer to get this order as circumstances do not definitively prove a death. If someone was still drawing on social security and not dead, I'm sure that there'd be a round about way to discover that he/she is still alive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_absentia

 

True, the SSA computers would see that he was alive and paying taxes and say "wait a minute, no more benefits for his minor children and/or spouse because he is NOT dead". But the SSA could not LEGALLY tell the family where he IS, only that he IS still alive, which they pretty much would have to do in order to explain why their benefits were being pulled....isn't this true? Isn't there something in the SSA laws that prevent them from disclosing the location of anybody to anybody?

 

Not strange at all considering how many miles of desert are in that area....literally like looking for a need in a haystack...actually worse.