We just had the unhappy news that a co-worker and her husband were involved in a vehicular accident in the Florida Keys over the weekend, and both were killed. My question is: how did we learn about it here at work? Would her relatives (i.e. sister in New York) have been responsible for telling the victim’s boss? Or would the police have found out her workplace through a SS# check and called to inform us?
I’d ask directly here, but everyone’s pretty broke up, as you can well imagine.
Likely, a family member called in to let the workplace know. In my experience, the police only notify next of kin.
It is highly unlikely the police would call a person’s work to inform them of the death, but the police might call the person’s work in order to locate next-of-kin if none are known. While the authorities will generally assist the hospital in tracking down next-of-kin for notification purposes, the actual notification is usually done by medical personnel.
Once next-of-kin are notified, it is up to the family, not the authorities, to decide who else to notify and when. Usually, various family members or close personal friends of the family will take responsibility for making sure people who need to know are told, and that would include employers. But it’s not a set “responsibility” of any one particular person, and definitely would not be done by the police unless they were trying to track down next-of-kin.
Well, I’m hearing no voices to the contrary, Lissa & Jodi – thank you very much for your input.
Perhaps the patient’s medical card triggered something being noted in the personnel file.
I have a similar question about how life insurance companies and banks are notified of a death. Seems to me there is a lot of room for error. Benefits never paid, or accounts open to the wrong relatives, etc.
When my aunt died, we couldn’t find her papers. The executor of her estate had to wait for statements to come in the mail to find out where accounts and insurance benefits were located. Whenever a bill or statement came in, the executor would notify the company.
When someone dies without a will, there’s generally ample time to find all of these things because it takes a long time for the estate to be settled.
[I’ll preface the following with the usual disclaimers about different procedures in different legislative areas; not financial advise; etc]
I work for a bank in a department that deals with Probate issues (amongst other stuff).
We are generally notified either by a family member; the executor of the estate (if different) or a solicitor/notary acting for them. Basically we seek a few relevant documents, then get the executor to tell us where to transfer the money to. Account gets closed, job done! Any family disputes are strictly not our problem.
Of course, it’s not always straightforward and yes, there is room for error. There are outstanding cases where we have lost contact with executors or next of kin, some several years old. Accounts with balances running into the hundreds of thousands are just ambling along (earning interest) and we can’t get rid of them.
Also, in general if there is no activity on an account over a certain period of time it becomes dormant. We have many accounts that have been dormant for years and while I obviously can’t say if any of the customers are deceased, i’d privately bet on there being a sizeable number that are.
Regards,
mtk_
What happens to a dormant account after a long period of time?
Some banks find out using the Social Security Death Index… which isn’t exactly the quickest way.
Small-town banks sometimes have a guy who reads the obits every day and checks against bank records. Helps prevent shenanigans.
I’ve been dealing with death notifications since yesterday. My boss, who was also my mentor and friend of several years passed away. The family called me almost immediately, I notified the rest of the program offices, and most of her professional contacts. You’d be absolutely amazed at how many phone calls that can be. This situation is somewhat different than many, in that we are a small program, with offices scattered across half the state, and in a largely rural area. Larger organizations may have some formal procedures or something.
At the moment, nothing. I’ve heard of there being dormant accounts dating back to the ninteenth century (repeat: have heard, don’t know if that’s true or not)
There was some discussion about a year or two ago that the UK Government would begin automatically claiming funds that had been unclaimed after 15 years and award it to causes beneficial to society in general (youth projects and things like that). I think Gordon Brown mentioned it in a Budget speech. Nothing has changed yet though.
I think there’s about £15 billion sitting unclaimed in UK banking systems at the moment.
Regards,
mtk_
In Canada, the Bank of Canada looks after accounts that have been dormant for more than 10 years. http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/ucb/index.html
At least in Minnesota, Michigan and Iowa, the state takes over control of the accounts, and starts publishing lists (I’ve seen newspaper and internet) of people who have unclaimed property. A couple of years ago, I was scanning through some of these, and I ended up helping an uncle reclaim some money. I think that was from a previous employers retirement fund.