Suppose I just decide to pack up and leave my home, my job and everything else in my life and live in a cave somewhere? There’s nothing going on in my life such as pending prosecution, difficult family life, out of control debts or trouble with criminal elements that would prompt anyone to think I had some strong reason to disappear. I’m fully aware that my friends and family believe that I was probably a victim of foul play, they have reported my absence to the authorities and everyone concerned is searching for me. They’re looking for me, I know it and I’m doing everything I can to avoid their search. As far as anyone else knows, I just fell off the face of the Earth and there is no obvious reason for it.
In this hypothetical example, assume that I live alone with no spouse or children so there is nobody in my life who might be considered ‘abandoned’ in any kind of legal sense. Walking away from my mortgage and other debts would be an issue for the civil courts and not likely to result in criminal prosecution should my existence be revealed.
Say I hide this way for years, maybe even after I’ve been declared legally dead. When I finally do resurface, what criminal charges am I likely to face?
Walking away from cars with loans on them would result in repossession by the lender.
Walking away from your mortgage would result in foreclosure by the bank. I’m not sure what the bank would do with any of your personal property you abandoned in/at your home, but I can’t imagine they’d store it for very long after foreclosure. Maybe it (your stuff) would end up at auction?
Walking away from credit card debts and other bills would result in collection agencies sending you dunning notices and trying to reach you over the phone, and eventually you’d end up with black marks on your credit rating for all of this stuff.
I can’t imagine any criminal charges that would apply to someone who merely avoided contact with all of their previously known associates.
If you hide out with the intent of discharging debts by getting yourself declared dead, could a particularly creative prosecutor charge you with fraud? After all, you’re engaging in misleading actions for personal financial gain.
I would think this would only apply if they could clearly show that you intended to create the impression that you had died. The case of Marcus Schrenker may be of interest here. Saddled with legal and financial problems, he tried to fake his own death in a very real plane crash. He faced a stack of criminal charges for his financial crimes prior to the crash, and he was charged for the deliberate destruction of an aircraft and causing the unnecessary activation of a rescue response, but it’s not clear that any of his charges were related to faking his death to escape his debts.
Assuming I’m a legal adult or emancipated minor, I have every right to leave my family and friends behind with no word of explanation. But I’m doing more than merely avoiding contact. I’ve actively evading a police investigation. I could solve a lot of problems by walking into any police station, establishing my identity and telling them to stop looking for me. As an adult, I don’t believe that they would forward my location and contact info to my family against my specific instructions. I’m not doing that though. The police are looking for me, I know it and I’m actively avoiding their investigation. Could avoiding the police in this way be a criminal act in and of itself?
Unless you’re actively avoiding prosecution for a crime I can’t imagine that not providing yourself to the police when they’re looking for you is a crime. Police doing a wellness check doesn’t compel you to present yourself, or cooperate in any way.
My biggest worry would be about taxes. If you left partway through a year you’d still need to file a federal tax return. Even if you have no income you may need to file.
Over here, and I suspect over there too, simply vanishing will not create any kind of investigation by the cops unless there was some evidence of foul play or criminal activity.
I believe that hundreds of people do exactly this every year and all the police will do is file a misper.
One question is, “How are you sustaining yourself after you vanish?” If you have a job, or even assets other than cash, your will either be identified as yourself, or will need an assumed identity. If you use your own information, you will be found. If you use an assumed identity, I assume you would violate some financial/tax laws. Working for cash likely violates tax provisions.
Not sure there would be anything illegal if somehow or another you amassed enough cash that you carried around with you (how big of a suitcase would you need?) and simply lived on cash for the rest of you life. Initially withdrawing/amassing that amount of cash would likely trigger reporting requirements. If you failed to comply with those, there could be criminal penalties.
Well, it’s flight. We flee what we fear. In the case such as your hypothetical, and the real case for me, fifty years ago, it is not illegal, but it is maladaptive behavior. Nothing you fled fails to come along with you. It does make misdemeanors out of lots of small matters of regular life. Not that anyone cares.
But, the cop questions require answers. Who are you? What’s your address? Do you have any identification? Where are you going? What are you doing here? It’s like getting arrested by Immanuel Kant, if you don’t have any answers. There are no right or wrong answers, but you need an answer.
Find an answer. You can get help if you need it.
Tris
Be whoever you are. Unless you can be a superhero. Then who you are is a secret identity.
Hmmm. But where? In America? Because there’s a lot of places you could off to and pretty much be fine. Places like Bangkok and Manila, for example, have a sizeable contingent of expats who left to escape something untoward in their home country. From child support, alimony, to all kinda of financial ‘misunderstandings’ or scary ex partners. Nobody has been seeking them out and many have been there for ages.
(I do think the digital age is gonna catch up to these people hard one day, but years of basking in another life have made them pretty complacent, in my experience.)
If you’re not fleeing a legally binding issue, I don’t see that you are committing any crime, or have any obligation to be found if you so choose.
Even if you are wanted for a crime you committed there will be a statute of limitations that can expire, except for murder. However, if you’ve been sentenced for a crime but did not do the time I believe you will still have to serve that sentence no matter how much time has gone by. In actual cases like that the sentence is sometimes forgiven, but it tends to piss off the state and they want their pound of flesh.
Fleeing to escape prosecution may negate the statute of limitations while you are on the run. But IIRC you have to actively take steps to avoid prosecution (such as moving out of the jurisdiction or changing your name), which might apply in the OP.
IANAL but my understanding is that once prosecutors file the paperwork, then that changes the statute of limitations. Flight from prosecution is also a crime by itself so that even if the prosecutors drop the original charge, you could still be charged and convicted on flight, and the statutory clock wouldn’t even begin until you return. I’m also guessing that if the long arm of the law wanted you, they could issue an order to forfeit your passport. They could certainly choose not to renew it, which means you’d have to get citizenship somewhere else.
I was assuming something earlier in the process, but there probably isn’t much there, once you know you would be wanted it would be hard to convince anyone you didn’t flee to avoid prosecution.
My plan would be to meet a woman with a young child, sweep her off her feet, then become a stay at home dad, helping her in raising her child. Eventually I would share my history.
If you have no debt [mortgage, credit cards, car loans, student loans] there is nothing stopping you from ditching your life if everything is zeroed out [taxes filed for that year, all debts paid, leases cancelled or whatnot] If you have valid ID, and resources [money being the main one, cash is best] then how you live is up to you. Are you going to get a job in your new location, how will you pay for food and transportation?
As a woman that had a stalker I had given this a fair amount of thought, if I needed to disappear it would have been easier than if I had been a man - all I would have needed to do was get to a fairly large urban area [Los Angeles?] and find a man willing to let me shack up with him in exchange for sex, cooking and cleaning services - et voila! no rent, no bills, and I could possibly make money under the table babysitting or cleaning houses while not working a ‘real job’ and with mass transit or borrowing a vehicle, no pesky need to show my ID around as long as I don’t get a traffic stop or arrested for anything. A man would have a more difficult time of it, there being certain expectations of shacking up with a guy - he has a job and a vehicle, and acts like a normal guy.
Now if you intend to just pull up stakes and get a new job and residence wherever you end up, as long as you are not running from debts and the law, no big deal - hell, you can even change your name legally and make it slightly more difficult to track you down by name [they could stlll find you with your SSN]
What your friends, family and even the police come to believe is irrelevant. What might be relevant, under certain circumstances, is what you intended them to believe. Just disappearing doesn’t suggest that you led them to believe there was foul play. For example, leaving a fake ransom note or driving your car off a bridge to fake a drowning could be a problem if you’re doing it to perpetrate a fraud.
Again, without fraudulently faking your disappearance or fleeing the law, I don’t see what they are doing as any of your concern. As a general rule, you don’t owe other people your whereabouts, even if they love you.
Well, you’ve answered your own question here but I will note that if you ran up debts with the intention of walking away from them, it would be fraudulent, and there is likely some crime in your state as well as federal banking laws that would apply.
Unless you did something to fake your death to commit fraud, it’s not your fault you were declared dead so I doubt any charges would apply. However, even though you’ve reappeared, you can’t get away from your judicial death so easily. For example, if your estate had been probated and distributed in accordance with the laws of your state, that property is likely gone for good. You may also have problems doing things like claiming social security checks, government benefits, and retirement benefits. You might have to sort out issues if your life insurance got paid to your beneficiaries.
If you disappear to Manila or Bangkok I presume there is paperwork required to live in a foreign country in this day and age, which will in one way or another make itself known back home too. How likely are the local authorities to ignore that? Plus you need money. I imagine the living to be had in caves etc. is already taken by locals trying to eke out a living. I assume even in third world countries, to make enough money to not live in a cave requires some sort of paperwork. I assume a lot of the older Get-Away-From-It-All expats are living on a pension which is a comfortable fortune overseas. Of course, you could always join a Shao-Lin monastery and take up Kung Fu.
The only likely way to move away and not get noticed that I can think of is to be an EU citizen and disappear to a different EU country which has little in common with the other?
