This question stems from a situation I encountered in my professional life. Briefly, a man was brought to the Emergency Department, already pulseless, I worked on him for long enough to determine that further resuscitative efforts were futile and declared him dead. The specifics of his medical history and what happened immediately before his arrival in the ED are unimportant other than to say that after reviewing that information I still don’t know why he died. I did not end up having to complete the death certificate but what if I did? What would have been the consequences (if any) had I listed his manner of death as natural but his cause of death as “unknown”? Would it have created problems with life insurance claims or with executing his will? Other legal ramifications? Jurisdiction is the state of Missouri.
“He’s dead, Jim.”
About the only reason insurance doesn’t pay out is for suicide, and even then, there’s usually a time-limit on the suicide exemption, like a year or two after taking out the policy. If the death certificate says “natural causes”, the suicide clause wouldn’t apply.
Wills are to direct how your stuff goes after you’re dead. He’s dead, so his stuff should get distributed as set out in the will. There is normally a legal principle that if you’re killed by someone, and that someone is mentioned in your will, that person is treated as pre-deceasing you and therefore doesn’t inherit. But again, if the death certificate says “natural causes”, that would keep that principle from applying.
Not meant as legal advice, since I know nothing about the law of Missouri, but those are the general principles that normally apply.
I agree with Northern Piper, as far as he said. but imagine the cause of death did matter to the estate, such as in a wrongful death suit where his survivors allege that he died of discombobulator poisoning and are suing the discombobulator manufacturer. In that case, your professional opinion is just one of many that the jury can hear and they can determine that despite your view, he did, in fact, die of discombobulator poisoning and Big Discombobulator is responsible, even if you disagree. The cause of death is a matter of fact to be determined by the jury and the death certificate is just one piece of evidence that can establish it.
It is my understanding that it is very, very, very hard to deny payment on a life insurance policy if the person is, in fact, dead. No one wants to be on the side of the insurance company leaving a widow to starve, and so the laws very strongly favor the policy holder.
Several bad jokes come to mind. I’ll skip those. :eek: OP, have you asked your facility’s legal counsel?
It’s my understanding that the OP’s deceased patient died of ‘heart failure’. That would almost certainly be true.
Some policies have a double indemnity clause for accidental deaths. I had to fight this once for a woman who died related to a fall in the shower. We argued accident, they attempted to argue she had an illness that caused the fall. It was a small policy and they eventually relented.
No. Heart failure is a medical condition with specific definitions. It doesn’t just mean that the heart stopped. That’s cardiac arrest. And cardiac arrest isn’t considered a specific cause of death. Rather, it’s the final result of all possible causes of death.
Even if she had an illness that caused the fall, I’d think the cause of death would be the fall, unless they wished to argue she did before her head hit the floor or whatever.
((In any case she didn’t get the illness on purpose so an accident caused the illness, right?))
If 2 people die within 5 days of each other legally they are said to die at the same time. Found that out when my father and stepmother died 3 days apart. Not sure if all states do it that way but many do .
I met a guy who worked for Fidelity and he worked on accounts where people died. For example he said there could be a lot of problems if the husband died and still listed his previous wife as the person who got the money. The current wife would try to fight that but mostly she would not win.
There’s also the Slayer Rule. If you kill someone, you can’t get anything from their estate.
So, unknown cause of death might let a slayer inherit when they shouldn’t.
yep, as mentioned in post #2
There are also proceeds-of-crime and state-expenses rules.
In my state, in my country, from talking to a lawyer who was involved, if you killed your parents, the state takes your share of the estate. It doesn’t go to your siblings or children.
Around here, if the cause of death is unknown, you can’t complete the death certificate. You are required to notify the coroner, and the coroner tries to make a determination.
In some situations, although you may not know the cause of death at first, you may be funded and have permission to perform an autopsy and make a determination. If the death is unexpected, that might not be legal.
In most cases, the death is expected. The person is old or sick, and is dying, and then dies, and the attending doctor issues a death certificate. Often the cause of death on the death certificate is more or less wrong: we know this because post-mortem’s routinely turn up new information. Society doesn’t place a high value on that, as we know because relatives routinely do not ask for post-mortem investigations.
From talking to a friend who worked in a funeral parlor for a while, there are also doctors who you can just call up in the middle of the night, and they’ll come out and fill out a death certificate for someone they’ve never met and know nothing about :smack: (that’s sort of not legal, but again, mostly nobody cares. You’d hope it wouldn’t happen like that for gunshot wounds, but he was sufficiently gob-smacked by it happening at all, that he wasn’t sure of that.)
No such rule in the UK. If ‘H’ and ‘W’ die in the same car accident, then it might be important to decide who died first, especially if they were second or subsequent spouses and there is no will with specific clauses.
The coroner would be expected to rule in the first instance, and it is probably pretty rare for both to die simultaneously. In the end, under the ‘Commorientes Rule’, it is legally assumed that the older person died first.
I thought I had checked each post thoroughly. Woops.
It’s not that they legally die at the same time - it’s that their estates are treated as if each one predeceased the other . Rather than having your father inherit your stepmother’s estate and then his estate being distributed as if she predeceased him, her estate would be distributed as if he predeceased her and then his would be distributed as if she died first. Cuts down on estate taxes ( for those estates subject to taxes) and avoids the situation where some of a man’s estate goes to his wife, and her estate goes to her niece ( because her husband died first) when the man’s will might have left his estate to his cousin if his wife died first.
I believe almost every state has a similar law, and it only applies if there isn’t a provision in the will for how to handle nearly simultaneous deaths.