Good call - I should have mentioned my cite. The book is The Knife Man, about John Hunter, a surgeon and dissection proponent in the 1700’s (*excellent *book).
Here’s the inline cite - and a slight correction. Stealing a body was still punishable (one shilling fine), but taking the personal effects could be a capital crime.
Grave robbing is a crime, so who would a Prosecutor put down as owner if there are NO findable/matter of record Heirs?
I assume the dead person’s effects would escheat to the state with the rest of his stuff, but I’m not 100% on that.
I did find this, note the Committeee notes;
2006 Ohio Revised Code - 2927.01. Abuse of a corpse.
§ 2927.01. Abuse of a corpse.
(A) No person, except as authorized by law, shall treat a human corpse in a way that the person knows would outrage reasonable family sensibilities.
(B) No person, except as authorized by law, shall treat a human corpse in a way that would outrage reasonable community sensibilities.
© Whoever violates division (A) of this section is guilty of abuse of a corpse, a misdemeanor of the second degree. Whoever violates division (B) of this section is guilty of gross abuse of a corpse, a felony of the fifth degree.
HISTORY: 134 v H 511 (Eff 1-1-74); 137 v H 741 (Eff 10-9-78); 146 v S 2. Eff 7-1-96.
The effective date is set by section 6 of SB 2.
19xx Committee Report or Comment.
1974 Committee Comment to H 511
This section prohibits treating a human corpse in a way the offender knows would produce righteous and reasonable outrage among members of the family. It covers conduct formerly prohibited by specific prohibitions against grave robbing and unlawful dissection of a corpse. It also includes other kinds of conduct, such as copulating with or otherwise mistreating a corpse. The section does not include conduct authorized by law, such as a mandatory autopsy or the exhumation of a dead body on court order.
Abuse of a corpse is a misdemeanor of the second degree.
As noted, the dead person’s estate exists instantaneously upon death.
As for the unborn child question, it depends on how the property was “set aside.” If you just put the property in an envelope marked “for my brother’s firstborn child,” and stuck the envelope in your file cabinet, you still own that property (whether or not the child is born yet), so of course you can still change your mind. If you transferred the property to an irrevocable trust with your brother’s firstborn child as the beneficiary, the trustee (in his or her capacity as such) owns the property, and if you take it back that’s theft.
Is it even possible to create an irrevocable trust for a child that doesn’t exist yet? Unless the child has been conceived that would seem to violate the perpetuity limitation.
The trust will, of course, be subject to the rule against perpetuities (unless it’s in a state that has abolished the rule) and will revert to the estate of the settlor if the interest does not vest within lives in being plus 21 years. That does not make the trust revocable. Anyway, your brother’s life is now in being, so the rule against perpetuities will not present an issue (though the failure to vest will, if he never has a son). Now, if you left the property to the children of all of your brothers, and your parents are still alive (be they ever so ancient), then the rule against perpetuities would invalidate the transfer, because your fertile octogenarian parents might have more children after your death.
Note for nonlawyers: The rule against perpetuities provides that, to be valid, an interest must vest within a period measured by the lives of some specified group of persons plus 21 years plus the human gestation period. It’s famously complicated in operation.
An example from a while back, and subject to local law, but words from The Master…
"The men were tracked down a few days later, but there was no law against stealing a body, so they were charged with stealing the coffin or, as one cop put it, “Gram Theft Parsons.” "
from: What’s up with the strange end of country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons? - The Straight Dope
Jokes aside, theft from a body is a common crime.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010123/aponline164838_000.htm
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-03-23/news/9303230305_1_examiner-corpse-robert-nicks
When it was happening in Sydney, AUS, part of the explanation was that morgue attendents knew that some of the bodies where in such a bad state that the estate was never going to try to recover the cash from the body.
In the UK, and I suspect in most jurisdictions, it is assumed that the older party died first.
I know it is the same here, as a former classmate and his wife died instantly in a car accident, and the court ruled he had died first as he was the older of the pair. His child from a previous relationship received nothing, as his estate was determined to have passed from him, to his wife, to her parents.
The UK is not one but 3 jurisdictions. With regard to some areas of law like inheritance, Scottish law has always been as different from English law as say French or German law would be. I could be wrong but I don’t think it is assumed that the older person died first in Scotland.
That sounds odd. The intestacy laws that I’m familiar with say that if you die without a will leaving a spouse and a child, the estate is divided between the spouse and the child, not going all to the spouse.
The whole issue of simultaneous deaths of spouses is one of the reasons to have a will. It’s common to put in a clause that the spouses only inherit from each other of the one spouse survives the other by 30 days or a similar period. If not, the will provides alternative dire action on how the estate is to be distributed, usually to children.
It’s something of both in the Netherlands: if you have both a child and a spouse, the spouse will de facto receive all of the inheritance, with the child receiving a claim on the spouse for his part which cannot be enforced until the remaining spouse is also dead. I do not know what the rule here is about spouses dying at the same time, however.
At the law firm I used to work at (US), if a married couple both had their wills drafted by us then we would include language stating which of the two would be considered to have predeceased the other in the event of a “simultaneous” death.
I actually went through a variant of one of these scenarios. It was not a big hassle, but required me to acquire and submit to Probate 5 different death certificates.
My maternal grandparents and unmarried aunt bought two adjoining properties. My mother was the other sister of 2.
In order, my grandfather, grandmother, mother, father, and aunt died, over several years. Some of the estates were never probated, or done incorrectly.
So I had to submit all five death certificates along with a flowchart showing regardless of who willed what to whom and when, I was sole heir, in order to settle my aunt’s estate and sell the property, which was not wanted.
:smack:
This is the case I was thinking of: Carefully select the beneficiaries of your Will - MST Lawyers
That was an Australian case, in the U.S. it would fall under the Simultaneous Death Act. States may have different versions of the UNIFORM Model/Act.
The Uniform Law Commission has the original SDA adopted in all 50 states, with the only distinctions being that some states adopted the 120-hour rule and some did not. So in Florida, for example, there must be no evidence that either party survived the other, whereas in most states a person who lingers in hospital for a few hours falls under the SDA.