You'll be dead of old age waiting for that to ever happen.

Which makes any Frog bureaucracy look easy-peasy to deal with.

Just try to SORN / tax a car after death & before probate.

Seems I dodged a bullet there, I couln't find dads paperwork, so just claimed ownership. Seemed to be fairly painless and quick.

I'm pretty sure I had both V5s in my name within 2 weeks...

Sorry Dabbs, you did not survive the last article. Your life was unfortunately ended by a stuck key hopping onto the lever of "shut off permanently" . You will be dearly missed.

We'll await your ghost to write any follow-up articles to keep the readership entertained. Please do so with maximum potential from beyond the grave. We're sure that your ghostly outfit will make you see over us and scare us all to hell. Very good luck with that.

Cheers - you will never ever have another hangover in your dead state!

Often wondered if Dabbsy had a ghost writer.

I can't wait for the Channel 5 series in which a team of burly undertakers rouse recalcitrant debtors in the middle of the night and demand they "get in the box".

Can't Pay? We'll Take You Away!

I can understand how this use case escaped the scope planning, but how about this for cruelty by design?

When my father died the (UK) married couple's pension was stopped immediately, but it took 3 months to start my mother's single person's pension. And that is normal.

Having been an executor (unfortunate title in the circumstances) now on a number of occasions I am no longer shocked by the incompetence, petty bureaucracy and general lack of empathy shown by government departments, financial institutions and service and utility providers. In many cases you are obliged to deal with a small number of "specially trained" staff who have clearly all received courses in officious insensitivity and saying "no" by default.

Whereas death is fortunately a once-in-a-lifetime event for most of us, you'd think it would be sufficiently common that organisations might by now have worked out how to deal with it - at least efficiently, if not sympathetically,

When Dad died, one of the first things we did was to get BT to transfer the phone into Mum's name

Naturally the phone went dead on the day of the funeral!

It can help a bit if all such bills are - in advance of anything - put under both names, as a precaution.

I was once a line manager at a public organisation famed for process and bureaucracy. The smoothest and most efficient set of processes we had were those that kicked in when someone resigned, by a long way.

"saved some systems operators a great deal of inconvenience over the summer vacation period."

Change the date of death, retrospectively.

Oh Yeah!

I'll bet you can't. Especially not to say you'd died after you'd already been declared dead .

What would happen if you committed a crime after being declared dead? Could they put a "dead" person on trial?

They did it with Martin Boorman, I think.

And at least one pope?

Don't forget that Charles II ordered Oliver Cromwell be dug up and then executed for Regicide. Did that change any death certificate or date of his death?

Ah no, hang on, I get what the question is now. Can you be declared dead and then go on to commit a crime with impunity?

I wonder if Paul McCartney did anything naughty after Abbey Road came out? "It wasn't me, luv, I was barefoot in Heaven at the time."

The Queen has been erroneously declared dead so often, she could have offed hundreds by now.

Mr Dabbs> ... she could have offed hundreds by now.

Could it not be said that HM's armed forces and SIS have done so for her on many occasions?

I love this! It's a real life enactment of Doc Daneeka's situation in Catch-22.

...Doc Daneeka himself came in about an hour afterward to have his temperature taken for the third time that day and his blood pressure checked. The thermometer registered a half degree lower than his usual subnormal temperature of 96.8. Doc Daneeka was alarmed. The fixed, vacant, wooden stares of his two enlisted men were even more irritating than always.

“Goddammit,” he expostulated politely in an uncommon excess of exasperation, “what’s the matter with you two men anyway? It just isn’t right for a person to have a low temperature all the time and walk around with a stuffed nose.” Doc Daneeka emitted a glum, self-pitying sniff and strolled disconsolately across the tent to help himself to some aspirin and sulphur pills and paint his own throat with Argyrol. His downcast face was fragile and forlorn as a swallow’s, and he rubbed the back of his arms rhythmically. “Just look how cold I am right now.

You’re sure you’re not holding anything back?”

“You’re dead, sir,” one of his two enlisted men explained....

...Colonel Cathcart refused to see him, and Colonel Korn sent word through Major Danby that he would have Doc Daneeka cremated on the spot if he ever showed up at Group Headquarters. Major Danby confided that Group was incensed with all flight surgeons because of Dr. Stubbs, the bushy-haired, baggy-chinned, slovenly flight surgeon in Dunbar’s squadron..."

As I started reading this I was reminded of the opening sequence in Terry Gilliam's masterpiece (IMHO at least), and then saw the embedded clip.

If anyone hasn't had the chance to see it then it's well worth sitting down with a bottle or two (You'll need it) and immersing yourself in a view on the near future, as told by someone in the 1980's - yes folks, it's all about now, and it's horribly accurate.

For example, when Part P (UK wiring regs) first came out it was if they'd taken the script and applied it to the whole process: paperwork in triplicate, only 'qualified' people able to do seemingly simple tasks etc etc. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to do a "Bob Hoskin's Suit" on jumped up electricians.

Anyway, thanks Dabbsy for another fine read.

That movie was decades ahead of its time. When it came out we had no idea it was a documentary.

The solution is to find a way to earn money but not pay tax on it BECAUSE YOU'RE DEAD.

the government will fix the issue and add an UNDO option within weeks of finding out someone is gaming the system and not paying income taxes / has written off their credit card debts etc.

...death and taxes. Or was it taxis? What about Uber?

Lemmy was a good choice, but surely something by Hotblack Desiato would have been even more appropriate?

By all accounts, a fine estate agent: https://hotblackdesiato.co.uk/

But his first choice was 'Gascoigne Pees'

I remember HotBlack Desiato used by kind permission of HotBlack Desiato on the record sleeve credits, confusing the hell out of me for years.

Just make sure there's a goodly life inurance policy in place and arrange a trusted person to be the beneficiary.

"This would certainly have been a satisfactory outcome from a purely bureaucratic standpoint and saved some systems operators a great deal of inconvenience over the summer vacation period."

That is a /wildly/ overoptimistic viewpoint.

The inheritance process if they both die at the exact same time and if the father dies later on are very different. The notaries involved would get quite busy untangling and correcting the process already under way. Depending on whether the father had siblings, and whether the child had siblings and children of his own, and how well they were getting along, it could easily take years.

In the UK if you both die within some period of time, the older one is declared to have died first.

This turned out quite useful in WWII, when some Lord and his son were killed in the blitz by the same bomb. The government claimed death duties on the father's estate then the same again on the son's.

I have heard of people writing into their will that their beneficiaries must live for 28 days or something past the passing to receive their bequest.

Found out when when I owned a company. We are married with no kids but partner is a few days younger.

If we were both in a car crash we assumed it all got split but everything would have gone to her elderly mother who would have become boss of a software company

Most countries have such a thing as a Wedding Certificate but in France, there is also an official Certificate of Unmarriedness, and it is a right old bugger to find someone to draw one up when you’re not French.

I had the same in Belgium... Trying to prove i wasn't already married involved applying for a marriage licence where i had previously lived in the UK, waiting 3 weeks for anyone to object, going back to get the certificate, getting the certificate countersigned by the UK consulate, getting it translated by an official translator, and getting that signed by a judge...

>> Most countries have such a thing as a Wedding Certificate but in France, there is also an official Certificate of Unmarriedness, and it is a right old bugger to find someone to draw one up when you’re not French.

> I had the same in Belgium... Trying to prove i wasn't already married involved applying for a marriage licence where i had previously lived in the UK, waiting 3 weeks for anyone to object, going back to get the certificate, getting the certificate countersigned by the UK consulate, getting it translated by an official translator, and getting that signed by a judge...

Similarly when I was cashing in my Swiss pension and superannuation after moving to the UK, I had to prove I had never been married(!). Fortunately I was sharing an office with a Justice of the Peace at the time, so I made up a declaration that I had never been married, signed it before the JP as a witness, he notarised it, and within a short time I had enough money to buy a house here.

That doesn't prove you were unmarried, it's just you saying that!

If I went 'round sayin' I was Emperor, just because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away.

I used to do support on a patient record system (not NHS), in a hospice, so many deaths registered as normal day to day business, but the frequency that we would get support calls coming in because someone had been incorrectly marked as deceased was bordering on concerning. Fortunately, once you knew how it was pretty simple to resurrect someone.

"Further investigation suggests that it might not have been so much an error by a civil servant as a parting fuck-you from a disgruntled parting tenant who had her declared dead after repeatedly but unsuccessfully trying to contact her for the refund of his deposit."

This one is doubtful. You need a doctor's certificate or like in this article, a considerable fuck-up to declare someone dead. And the body of course.

But yes, it seems declared dead people actually fully breathing are becoming a meme in France.

Mostly, it's just there are likely, more than one "Michel Martin" in France, and some clueless idiot fail to conduct more verification and tick the wrong button.

Heck, my village has 2 postal codes, because it's big and 2 parts of the postal "service" are serving both parts. And they are in *different* departments, X and Y. My village depends on department X and my postal code is Y.

It shouldn't take a PHD to understand this is possible and my postal code is Y doesn't *mean* I live in department Y, but even postal people plus 50% of all civil servant don't seem to comprehend this.

Fuckwits.

My house is not registered in the borough were the land it is build belongs to (not exactly a borough, but the local equivalent). Every time I need to sort something with an utilities company it's like going to hell and back

In the end, he persuaded a British consul to sign a letter stating that the aforementioned – a person he didn’t know and had never met – was, as far as he could guess, probably not already married

MrsO and I had to get one of these (each) from our respective embassies in Thailand so we could get married, took a day from both the UK and Indonesia's, then a day to get them translated, then a couple of hours to get dispensation from the Thai Foreign Affairs ministry to actually get married. And off we trotted to a registry office that was used to foreigners, 17 years ago :o)

To cover such blunder the Bureaucracy found the best solution was to push those people to commit suicide

Now that Mr. Dabbs is a distinguished guest of this country, I would suggest him to have a look to the work of [1]Georges Courteline . One century later, his epic descriptions of idiotic bureaucracy are still valid.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Courteline

How do you record the death of someone who is already marked dead? It's no use to correct one mistake and leave an inaccurate death date in the database. You would probably have to change the death record to accept multiple dates.

You must not kill the one who is already dead.

Used to be a thing in the middle ages (and probably in France today) if you had the sacrament of "last rights" and then recovered you were considered "sort of dead" by the church and had to fast and be in mourning for yourself for the rest of your life

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brain-tiny/tiny-brain-no-obstacle-to-french-civil-servant-idUSN1930510020070720

Probably my favourite Motorhead song. I remember reading an interview with Wurzel (late Motorhead guitarist who co-wrote the song) in Raw magazine years ago and he said he wanted it played at his funeral. I hope he got his wish.

In the UK, 'lasting power of attorney' basically gives you total control over an incapacitated person's affairs and, well... life.

If that person is very rich, and then gets better, (unlikely, but we're in that territory) - and you alone know, what do you do?

And even if you choose to do the right thing, try finding the Rollback command for that. You're more likely to be Committed.

I've got a Minority Report vibe goin' on...

Years back, when I got junk mail with a self-addressed prepaid envelope, I'd circle my name and address, write REMOVE FROM LIST next to it, and send it back to the offending organization.

Some didn't pay any attention, of course. So I took to writing DECEASED -- REMOVE FROM LIST (which horrified my wife and my mother, but was more effective.) I still got offers for pre-approved credit cards; apparently, death wasn't enough to make me a credit risk.

Only later did it occur to me that if I ever do need to take out a loan, I'll probably be told : "Sorry, Mr. Gray, but our records indicate that you're dead."

>if I ever do need to take out a loan, I'll probably be told : "Sorry, Mr. Gray, but our records indicate that you're dead."

You don't think being dead would stop the bank trying to sell you a loan?

Ah Mr Gray, since you are already dead we assume the term of this loan will 'eternity' with a typical APR of ....

This recalls a bit of Flann O'Brien, with Sir Myles Na Copaleen returning from the grave to distress his supposed widow, heirs, etc.

Also, wasn't there a nasty train wreck some years ago near London, in the aftermath of which various persons took it upon themselves to declare that others had died in the wreck--disgruntled spouses, partners, what have you?

Ah, the Certificat de Coutume! As an Irish person living abroad I was told that I had to provide one to the German authorities. This didn't apply to everyone, just Irish citizens and seems to be some sort of throwback to having to get permission from the church to marry. The Irish government website said that it could take up to two months to arrive, the requirements were not well documented and despite having sorted out the required paperwork while back in Ireland, was then told that I had to re-do them in Germany, my country of residence. Complete load of crap. The stupid bit of paper did actually turn up after two weeks (after re-submission) and not two months, but by that point we'd had enough and said fuck it, 'living in sin' is just fine thank you!