It is a different reason: to alert creditors that they must get their claims in on time.
In fact, wasn’t “placing a notice in a widely circulated publication” a standard practice legal requirement for some legal notices?
Yup.
Really need help. I have a cousin whos husband was killed in an automobile accident and she is a mess so I am trying to help but I have NO legal knowledge. She also remembers these “notices” in newspapers. Her question is do these notices hold any legal help in a death situation. Her husband had dealing with another woman who is trying to get ahold of his life insurance. They were still legally married. She has never worked and he took care of her for over 25 years so basically she has no money to fight the other party. ANY help would be deeply appreciated!
The help your cousin needs will be found under “Legal Assistance” in the yellow pages.
The life insurance should have a specified beneficiary; if it’s this Other Woman, your cousin is screwed. If it’s not, the insurance company should provide legal advice and assistance to protect the named beneficiary.
But it’s a job for a lawyer in any case. Possibly one who will take the case contingent on payment from the insurance settlement.
I don’t think that life insurance businesses will just pay out a lump sum to some random person. Only to people listed as beneficiaries.
Were there any provisions preventing men from running up big bills that the ex-wife would have to pay?
Thank you for the help! I have her on the trail of a pro-bono attny and also trying to get her to get a free consult from an attorney. As far as the debts incurred I am not up to date on that yet. The deceased husband had a business arrangement with “the other woman” and I am not sure what that is all about yet. I do know that he was cutting ties with “the other woman” and reestablishing a relationship with his wife so that may be “the other womans” theory as to get back at wife. Sorry for so many details but it is very hard to explain otherwise. I will keep checking back for more replies! Thank you all!!
There used to be a legal principle called coverture, where a husband and wife were considered to become one person when they got married. As one judge put it, and that person was the husband.
When Betty Sue Jones and John Jacob Smith got married, her name was either Betty Jones Smith or Mrs. John Jacob Smith. If J. J. Smith had a checking account, many merchants would allow Betty to sign a check as Mrs. J. J. Smith, and many banks would allow her to cash his paycheck, even if she wasn’t listed on his account. And, of course, the wife could charge stuff at local merchants in her husband’s name.
Sounds like a pretty sweet deal for the wife, right? Yeah, it was, IF her husband was making plenty of money and IF he was willing to let her use his name. Publishing the ads was one way to prevent a wife from running up huge charge bills. He could also go around to Tudbury’s and tell them that Blondie is no longer allowed to charge anything, and go to the bank and say that she’s not allowed to cash or sign his checks. Another way was to punish her, severely. Remember, it was legal for a husband to have sex with his wife whether she wanted it or not back then. And domestic violence wasn’t really taken seriously.
In some cases, the wife was earning more, and on a more regular basis, than her husband was. However, he had the right to control her paycheck, and to dispose of her assets without her permission.
I recall a case where the fellow died of cancer. He’d been shacked up with his woman for about 15 years, but for some reason his paperwork was still in the ex-wife’s name.
It was pretty nasty. He knew he was dying, he should have switched beneficiaries for his pension, his life insurance, written a will, etc. - he did not. Denial? Just a general asshole? Who knows. Fortunately, in Canada, the person you currently cohabit with for the last 6 months or more is entitled to your CPP survivor benefit (sort of like Social Security). It got ugly when the kids came by demanding that the truck, boat etc. were theirs.
In situations like that, good legal help is a must.
OTOH, some other fellow left his wife and kids for a bimbo, also very messy. He died in a car accident not long after, and had not changed his paperwork so the (ex)wife got everything.
My grandmother was (probably) bi-polar. Every spring, she’d go buy something expensive, pawn it and use the money to run off for a few weeks.
My grandfather put such a notice in the local paper, even though he had no intention of divorcing her, he just didn’t want to have to pay for her crazy.
He would put it in the paper a few weeks before her normal time to run off. Most of the local (small town) merchants would deny her credit.
After that, she’d take stuff from the house to pawn, like my clarinet.
Dear Abby printed a letter a while back from a young widow whose husband died suddenly, and he had a life insurance policy through work where the money ended up going to his first wife because he had never changed the beneficiary. The benefits coordinator said he probably assumed it automatically changed when he remarried, something s/he’d encountered more than once. :rolleyes: This widow wouldn’t have minded all that much if that first marriage had children, but it didn’t and hers did.
Moral of the story: Keep your beneficiaries updated.
And newspaper notices were once used in small towns for general gossip purposes. I have uncovered small-town newspaper postings about some of my own ancestors in the late 1800’s. I can tell that in such and such a month great great great grandma wasn’t feeling well, please send cakes and get-well cards and that Mayor Smith’s little sister is in town, having traveled all the way from Ohio and is staying at the mayoral residence, tea is at 5. Huge amounts of personal details for anyone and everyone to read, and now these records are being archived and may be online soon (as opposed to just microfilm) for everyone in the world to read.
I just went thru a few years of a small town paper looking up family references in the local doings column. Trips out of town, visitors, school events, etc. Of course going in or out of the hospital. No HIPAA in a small town back then. Lots of legal notices about (other) people owing money. A lot.
I copied all I could find and sent them to my sister who was thrilled by it.
In another locale, my aunt was for years the local new columnist for her area. So all our family visits and such were documented. She’d clip out the items and send them to me so I have a stack of those.
Big city papers might have a lot more subscribers if they did this. Of course, each paper would weigh a hundred pounds, but at least they’d have eyes for advertisers.