So I had to prove to everyone that what I was doing was right. For a few years now I have been supporting system administrators. I have yet to meet a sys admin who has passed a single working day without using the kill command. The answer is not automatic. The sole purpose of kill is to send a signal to a process.
Free resources used by the process, flush all files and exit.
Trap the signal. Execute some code that the programmer attached to the particular signal. Ignore the signal. Don't do anything. A properly written application does not use the default behavior even if it does want to terminate.