Mrs Cad is curious if she would ever be notified if her dad died. I said she would as she would not be that hard to track down. Will what if he remarried? What if Mrs. Cad is not in the will?* I said that the executor/trix would track her down as a matter of probate considering she is a next-of-kin and has an interest in knowing how her father disposed of his assets** even if she doesn’t inherit anything.
Not that she cares about it but if you’re in a will chances are you are notified.
** Because she needs to be able to fight it if she wants and the executor/trix would have a duty to contact her.
Do I have it even remotely right?
He lives(?) in Florida if it matters
I wouldn’t put money on anyone contacting her. If there is someone in his life who steps up to organize the logistics of handling his remains and his estate they could probably manage to do so without anyone contesting their legitimacy.
Your wife may be able to sue after the fact if his estate was dissolved without her knowledge or consent, particularly if he died without a will, but that would be a lot harder to manage if she doesn’t even know what assets he had.
I think if he was a veteran there is an inflexible law that she must be contacted re: veterans life insurance. It cannot be assigned denied or written off, regardless of the will.
A buddy of mine died, we only know he died because he was dying when we saw him last. His parents were never notified and they don’t seem to interested in looking into it.
If he’s no longer on active/reserve duty the life insurance has probably long since lapsed. I think there is something like a $250 dollar burial allowance but maybe not any more.
My dad was in the service at the end of WW2 and was not activated. He had no contact with them at all after and was a college professor and a leftie against the Vietnam war etc. When he died there was a life insurance policy and it was necessary for all his children to be equal shares in it under federal law. I can’t imagine he kept this thing going over the years consciously, and i thought it was some basic thing that all of them had.
A timely question. I was notified just two weeks ago that long-lost Mom died. The only reason I found out was because her brother-in-law, my deceased father’s only living sibling, age 95 now, was notified, and he sent me an e-mail. If he hadn’t lasted this long, I’m not sure if or how I would have found out.
I don’t think she would be notified unless he was destitute, her name came up, and the authorities are hoping someone will help with the final expenses. Even with a will it’s up to the executor to “try” to find the relatives and distribute the estate properly.
When my grandfather died my Dad chose to contact 2nd generation family halfway across the country who didn’t really know who my grandfather was. I think he was simply showing respect to my grandfathers family.
One thing that might be helpful is to set up a Google alert. If he has a common name, add some other useful terms, like “Marine” and “survived by”. If you set this up in Google News, it has a good chance of finding the obit in a local paper. It is also possible that you will get too many hits for it to be useful, but it is certainly worth a try.
My husbands grandmother died about 10 years ago, he had no idea she was even still alive. Apparently she had been living quite comfortably in a retirement home. The lawyers in charge of the probate contacted him. There was a small estate and he and 4 other living relatives split the inheritance (about $6,000 apiece). On the other hand, he didn’t know that his estranged father died, and I don’t remember how he found out exactly.
It seems relatives are only officially contacted if there is an inheritance issue.
Mrs. FtG had some contact with her father. Not much. But they had her address, phone number, etc.
One Xmas, she got a call (note!) after she sent him a card. He had died earlier in the year!
She started calling around. Her sister, who was closer to him and lived in the area didn’t know it. A brother, who was totally estranged from him, was the only one notified and he didn’t bother to tell anyone else. Because, who cares, right?
The issue is do they care and how hard do they try. If they have access to one of the many paid Internet people finders, they will find you in a flash. Using free Internet sites, they could probably find you with some effort. If they don’t want to find you, guess what?
If they don’t have you listed as next-of-kin, probably not. My real mother died and no one told me - I only found out because someone else found out, and it went through the grapevine. Her sons - the kids she actually loved :rolleyes: - went ahead with the cremation, ceremony, and didn’t tell anyone. We didn’t find out for two more weeks.
I wasn’t notified either, at least not officially. I never knew my biological father, so when my brother told me he had died, I just shrugged. He had no estate, not even enough money for a headstone, so he’s in a numbered grave in Fairbanks. Without an executor to go looking for heirs, there’s no reason for official notification.
I knew there was no money coming to me, btw. I did want to know how she died for my own medical history. She was my mother, after all. And she died relatively young - in her sixties.
Things may be much different before the 30 years I am familiar with. For quite a while veterans group life insurance is something you have to volunteer for and pay for. For a very long time now at least insurance is not something you get automatically.
I wonder who it is that St Cad thinks would notify Mrs Cad. I am pretty sure that unless there was some legal requirement, like a legacy, no one other than a relative would even bother.
That’s certainly the case in the UK. It was only by chance that my sister-in-law discovered that her father, who had divorced her mother many years before, had died. A distant cousin offered condolences and told her that he had been cremated some months before.
Perhaps this will be less likely to happen as we all join the ‘connected’ generations. I am certainly in touch with several distant relatives through Facebook, with whom I would never have corresponded.
If there is a probate estate, then yes, the executor is supposed to notify everybody named in the will and everybody who would inherit via intestate succession. (Whether s/he makes the effort to do so may be another question.)
Quite a lot of the time, however, there is no probate estate. For example, if he remarries, he may arrange his finances so everything passes to the new wife by right of survivorship, without passing through probate. Alternatively, he may leave little or nothing, and the “small estates” procedures in most states are sufficiently informal that you may never be notified.
If the police are involved (e.g., an unattended death), they’ll usually try to track down somebody to notify, but they don’t typically try to track down everybody who might have an interest. For example, if Mrs Cad has a sibling they can find more easily, that’s good enough for them.