What happens when someone “legally dead” shows up alive?
Dear Straight Dope: I recently saw the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks. In the film he is the victim of a plane crash and presumed dead for four years. Eventually he escapes the island he is stranded on and makes it back to civilization. There’s mention once he gets back about “bringing him back to life,” which involved a lot of paperwork. I got thinking this sort of thing has to have happened in the past and there must be rules on the books on how it’s handled. So, how IS it handled? Is there in fact a LOT of paperwork? And what about debts? — Scott The law calls people who disappear “absent” or “missing.” Professor Jeanne Carriere prefers a more dramatic term: “the living dead.” In her article, “The Rights of the Living Dead: Absent Persons in Civil Law,” published in the Louisiana Law Review, she says The number of these “living dead” in the United States has been estimated at between 60,000 and 100,000. They create a morass of legal problems. Questions may arise concerning the secur
