Hypothetical situation: guy works a regular job, say at a fast food place, for a couple of years. Everybody there knows him fairly well, but he doesn’t have any family or real good friends–only child of only children, parents are deceased, spends most of his time gaming and whatnot. He’s not a total indigent hermit or misanthrope, but he really doesn’t have any strong connections.
One day he drops dead. Natural causes.
Who takes responsibility for his remains? For sake of argument, say he lives in Teaneck, NJ. (Knowing the Dope, an assistant coroner from Freehold or someplace will probably be in shortly, but speculation is allowed, of course.)
This was one of the top results for “coroner no next of kin”, which was the only reason I linked to it; however, I would assume that most counties have similar procedures.
The county he died in will assume responsibility for the burial (which in Teaneck, NJ would be Bergen County). In most cases, it will be through a local funeral home under contract. The service will obviously be minimal but they don’t just dump the body in a ditch.
I worked in Englewood, NJ, right next to Teaneck. We had a co-worker who died suddenly, who had no family and apparently no friends. We arranged for a simple cremation ceremony, but ran into a problem when NOBODY wanted to pick up his ashes. The funeral home called us four times before the broker finally agreed to do it.
There is an excellent documentary called A Certain Kind of Death that explores this very issue - I believe it was filmed in California, however. I saw it on Netflix Watch Instantly and would very much recommend it only it may not be for the weak of stomach.
FWIW, I was thinking of using this as a MacGuffin of sorts in a story I have rumbling around. Sounds like it will work with no suspension of disbelief.
Usually, they go to reimburse the county funds that were used for his burial. (Most often, there is not much – not enough to cover those costs. People with lots of money always seem to have someone as next of kin.) when there are extra funds, they get used to bury other such people. IF any still remained, I guess the county could indeed use it for anything it wanted. But that seldom happens.
There’s a This American Life episode that has a part about a lady who dies in this same situation and is about the people who deal with her body and with all her possessions. It’s also in LA and also very sad, but obviously less graphic: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/346/home-alone
I seem to recall that the way it works in LA was that once they decide nobody’s going to claim a body, they cremate it (in house) and then they hold annual mass burial ceremonies of all the unclaimed ashes. It is probably quite a lot different in a smaller town, since LA gets hundreds of indigent bodies a year.
All answers very good, so I won’t add anything on the scenario of unclaimed decedant with no known next-of-kin. However, answers so far have been given based on the assumption that the dear departed made no will (died intestate) and left no instructions as to what to do in the event of his/her death.
Being an anti-social loner with no known NoK doesn’t mean one can’t prepare for “Life’s Final Eventuality”. One can prepare written, notarized instructions and leave them in an easy-to-find place. The document will let the finders/authorities know which funeral home to contact and which lawyer has one’s will on file. Since one has thoughtfully pre-paid the funeral services, the County need not be concerned in the laying to rest of one’s mortal remains. Once the executor/executrix of the estate has been notified, he or she will deal with probating the will, settling with one’s creditors, disposing of one’s assets, and filing the final 1040 (the “taxes” part of the proverbial “death and taxes”), among many other tasks. If one has no friends whom one can trust to be named executor(trix), there are banks that offer estate management services.
Hope you find this info useful and the overly formal prose entertaining. Memento mori.
I dunno, I actually found it kind of touching - these people in this office put a shocking amount of effort into a job that really has no intrinsic importance except human kindness and dignity. It made me feel pretty good about people.
There was an episode of HBO’s “Six Feet Under” with the same scenario - woman chokes to death on her dinner in her home, lies there for a few days until the smell is noticed, etc. She did, however, leave a will as Toucanna suggested, specifying what she wanted, and although nobody was around to attend her service (except the funeral home employees) they did work to accommodate her final requests.
She wanted an open casket, but had been lying on the kitchen floor so long post-mortem that it was not possible to do so, despite the mortician’s efforts.
Well, in Sweden there is a special fund where the money from people without any kin goes and you can apply for grants and scholarships from there so I just wondered if there would be some similar earmarking in the US.