So I was wondering, what happens if a person doesn’t have any family and they live alone when they die? Like what happens to their pets, or the stuff in their fridge? Are there people that take care of these trivialities or does a friend have to go throw away all the food? And since were on the subject, if you don’t have a spouse or children, or any family at all, what happens to all your property and possessions after you’re dead? Do they give it to a close friend or what?
It depending on how probate is addressed by your jurisdiction.
My partner just bought a house that belonged to such a person. He died last summer. I don’t know if he was intestate (did not have a will) but as far as we know, he had no children. A court-appointed trustee had a company along the lines of 1-800-DUMP-JUNK (not a real company, to my knowledge) come and remove all of his possessions from the house and put the house on the market with an as-is clause because the place was a dump.
I’m not sure if there is a formal process for pets, but I ended up with Fatcat when his elderly owner was taken to the hospital for his final stay. A social services representative had taken care of things like turning off the lights, making sure the stove and other burn-the-house-down appliances were off, and found Fatkitten a “temporary” home, which became permanent. I don’t know if that was a regular part of her duties or not.
Proceeds from the sale of the house and any assets he may have had were used to pay off any debts the little old man may have and the rest would be disbursed any relatives that could be tracked down. I am in Canada, and I believe that if here really are no family members to be found, the estate passes to the Crown (government). Edit: I believe tha tin most U.S. state it is similar. If a person dies intestate and has no surviving family, the estate is passed to the State. I’m not 100% sure though.
And in case you’re wondering, they did empty the fridge and cupboards, but they did not clean anything, so there was years’ worth of burnt crusty food on the stove and slime in the fridge.
If you have the interest/inclination, This American Life broadcast a story a few weeks ago about the people whose job is to deal with these situations. The story centers around a specific woman who died with no known family or friends. It starts a few minutes in here. The story is about 15 minutes long. Really interesting stuff.
I missed the edit window, but when my grandmother died, the neighbours realized something was wrong and called the police who broke in to find her recently deceased. The neighbours took her dog home and took care of him until my uncle could get there. It was all very informal, the police didn’t seem to mind that the neighbours took the dog, they just made a note about it so they could inform my uncle.
I would guess that officially, Animal Control (a branch of our police services) would take control of the pets, or else the police would call the Humane Society.
A friend of mine whose family was all thousands of miles away died after a brief hospital stay. There was an informal network of us friends who would visit him, and we convened and took care of a number of things, as his descendents migrated in from various countries. One of his daughters had a special role as executor of his will and took care of many business items. And I have his cat now.
I think one thing that paves the way for such stuff to be taken care of is the practical matter that generally if there are not people who are already acknowledgedly in charge, there are also not people to get in the way. If you are the only one inclined to take care of some issue, typically nobody else will complain or try to change the way you do it.
In each New York City county there is an official, the public administrator, who is responsible for handling the estates of individuals who die without close family members or others to represent the estate. Here’s the website for the Public Administrator of Queens County, which explains her responsibilities.
I also forgot to add: it’s common for the trustee to hold an estate auction to sell off things like furniture, china, rugs, etc. and anything else of value, such as artwork and collectibles.
In the case of my partner’s house, the content of the premises was in such poor condition (read: mountains of junk reminiscent of the Collyer brothers), they hired the junkers instead. I doubt anyone even attempted to take a cursory inventory. Although they had cleared out everything and the house was empty, we removed an additional 2.5 metric tonnes of stuff. :eek:
So you get a deal or a great deal on the real estate?
I speculate that, if there was absolutely no one to inherit the real estate, the government would eventually confiscate it for unpaid taxes.
I think it’s rare that someone would be so isolated that no one would know they were dead, but it does happen. My folks lived next door to an elderly man and kept an eye on him…driving him around for his errands, doing his yardwork, etc. When he became bedridden they took care of him, and my father is the one who found him when he died. I think that’s more the case…if there’s no family around, then the neighbors keep an eye out.
Each state has its own policies for dealing with intestacy (people who die without wills), but in general, property goes to spouse and children in some stated proportion (e.g., in this state family home and 1/2 remaining estate to spouse, other 1/2 divided equally among kids; if one but not the other survives, full estate goes to the survivor(s)). If no spouse or kids survive, it’s divided equally among “heirs of the nearest degree of affinity” – meaning grandhildren or siblings inherit before cousins, etc. If no heirs of any of the specified degrees of affinity (usually going as far as second cousins) can be located, then it escheats to the state. Many states have a procedure to hold the proceeds in trust for a stated number of years before escheat, in case a heir can be turned up.
(The above is a broad statement of glib generalizations about intestate law, true with the weasel phrases I added most of the time in most places, but each state does it differently. Don’t rely on it as the Gospel for your own area; it’s intended as informational only.)
I saw a documentary on TV about the LA office that deals with people who die with no known relatives. They try to find next of kin but in some cases the person they find does not want to have anything to do with the dead person. They keep the persons belongings for a while and eventually sell them off if no relative claims them . The person is cremated and the ashes buried in a common grave if the ashes are not claimed. It was an interesting film.
I remember something almost exactly like that, it was probably the same documentary. Do you remember the name?
It happened to me. Well, okay, not me, but I was involved. Several years ago, I had an elderly downstairs neighbour who had no family and no friends beyond casual neighbourhood acquaintances. One day, I noticed a vague stench coming from the stairs. At first, I thought my garbage had leaked and tried cleaning the stench away. After a few days, though, the stench was just getting (much) worse and it was clearer that it was coming from his place. Eventually, the landlord and I ended up calling the police and he was indeed dead. (I tried knocking on his door from the start, but he was a bit paranoid and never answered when he was still alive, so there was no way to be sure.)
I think the film was called A Certain Type of Death
I caught a bit of a programme or news article on English TV while I was back there last month.
It featured a local authority office who dealt with people who died alone and with either no family or no family immediately obvious.
What struck me was the people in the office (only two or three of them) really tried very hard to respect the lives of the people who had died, going to the funeral and providing a wreath - as the woman said, not required by law but by human decency. I thought it must be a very sad job but they injected some dignity back into a sad end.
I live alone (for now). I have a plan. I have several close friends of 10+ years who, by coincidence, live in my condo building. We all love it here and have no immediate plans to go anywhere else. One of these friends and I have discussed ‘a letter’ I have written. This letter clearly outlines my intent and plans if I die while living alone. Funeral plans, disposition of the body and distribution of personal property. She even gets a 10% cut of the insurance plan because while she isn’t family, she has agreed to handle the gruesome details, to include discovery of the body and calling the authorities. The letter contains all important documents, to include Social Security card, birth certificate, DD 214 (to document military death benefits), how to contact family members and insurance documents.
I know it sounds grim, but hey, what’s a single guy to do? I don’t want to die and have my body rotting for who knows how long before somebody figures it out.
There have been people who died alone and their body was not found for years. In those cases the utilities were paid by drafting their bank account so they were not shut off. I think 1 recent case it was around 7 years before the body was found and the TV was still on in the house. The guy’s body was in the chair in front of the TV.
You’d think the post man would have noticed the mail box getting full? Unless he had a slot in the front door. The foyer had to full of junk mail!
It’s hard to imagine someone from a utility, a tax collector, a neighbor not noticing somthing odd after just a few weeks. Maybe a year tops.
I remember the case(s) Bijou Drains is referring to. One was a 53 year old man in Winnipeg, Jim Sulker, who died of natural causes and whose death wasn’t discovered for 20 months. He died sometime in November 2002 and his mummified remains weren’t discovered until August 2004.
He lived in a high-end 2nd floor condo in an upscale neighborhood. He suffered from MS and had all his bills taken care of through electronic banking. The mailman didn’t notice the mail piling up because he received his bills electronically, so the only mail he was getting was pretty much junk mail (unless he opted out of junk mail) His disability checks were also direct-deposit, so he never had to go to the bank, and his bills were automatically paid, so none of his creditors noticed anything amiss.
The other one Bijou is referring to happened in Girona, Spain in 2007. A man bought a foreclosed home and found the mummified remains of a woman in her 50s sitting on the couch. She was estranged form her children who live in Madrid. Police wondered how the hell the bank would sell the property without inspecting it, but they didn’t do anything illegal. The woman had stopped making her payments in 2001.