when are you legally declared dead
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2009). A person may be legally declared dead (declared death in absentia or legal presumption of death) despite the absence of direct proof of the person's death, such as the finding of remains (e.g., a corpse or skeleton) attributable to that person. person can be declared legally dead after they are exposed to imminent peril and fail to returnâas in a plane crash, as portrayed in the movie Cast Away. In these cases courts generally assume the person was killed, even though the usual waiting time to declare someone dead has not elapsed.