And now for something weird...

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
I think this was posted before. Similar issues have happened here too. Apparently is is much easier to prove you are dead than it is to prove you are alive. ;)
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
16,333
I think this was posted before. Similar issues have happened here too. Apparently is is much easier to prove you are dead than it is to prove you are alive. ;)
Yes, another 'Living Dead' case.

http://loweringthebar.net/2013/10/no-youre-still-deceased.html
"[There's a] man sitting in the courtroom, he appears to be in good health," noted Judge Allan Davis on Monday. But by the end of the hearing, that man was dead.

He had also been dead when he walked in, though, so nothing really changed.

As Ryan Dunn of The Courier reported on Tuesday, Donald Eugene Miller Jr., formerly of Arcadia, Ohio, had been declared legally dead in 1994. In fact, Judge Davis was the one who issued that order. After a hearing at which Miller appeared (physically) in an effort to prove he was not actually dead, Davis ruled that despite this fairly compelling evidence of life, in the eyes of the law Miller would have to stay dead.
According to the report, Miller returned to Ohio in 2005, whereupon his parents informed him that he was dead. He's apparently been okay with that for some time, but told the court that he would like to be alive again now so he can get his Social Security card and driver's license back.

Nope.
After five years lost at sea, a missing wife thought long dead returns just after her husband remarries.

Funny movie.
 
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WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
32,895
Makes me glad I'm not affiliated with the legal system.

The solution seems pretty simple. The court has to declare the person alive, but at the same time also has to rule which actions taken as a result of the prior decree are reversible and which are not, based on the specifics of the case.

But this one has my scratching my head in that he moved to Florida in 1986. So how was he living? Was he being paid strictly under the table? Or was he employed and paying FICA against his SSN and the Ohio ruling fell between the cracks at the federal level, somehow? In either case, it seems that more than just declaring him alive is in order.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
16,333
Makes me glad I'm not affiliated with the legal system.

The solution seems pretty simple. The court has to declare the person alive, but at the same time also has to rule which actions taken as a result of the prior decree are reversible and which are not, based on the specifics of the case.

But this one has my scratching my head in that he moved to Florida in 1986. So how was he living? Was he being paid strictly under the table? Or was he employed and paying FICA against his SSN and the Ohio ruling fell between the cracks at the federal level, somehow? In either case, it seems that more than just declaring him alive is in order.
A update on the story.
http://loweringthebar.net/2014/08/feds-say-legally-dead-is-slightly-alive.html
Well, he’s still deceased as far as Ohio is concerned. To the federal government, though, legally dead is slightly alive. And that means it’s looking for loose change. But not in Miller’s pockets.

According to this report in The Courier (thanks, William), in April the Social Security Administration sent letters to Miller’s two daughters, demanding that they pay back the federal death benefits they got while Miller was legally dead. They got about $100 a week until they were 18, and the payments totaled less than $30,000. Including fees and interest, the SSA sought $47,256 from the daughters. It reportedly said that if it couldn’t get the money from them, it would then seek it from the ex-wife, and only if she also couldn’t pay would it go after the guy who abandoned them in the first place.

Who is dead.

What happens if you are dead under state law but alive as far as the feds are concerned? Good question. Normally this is the kind of thing to which a federal court (or agency) is required to apply state law. Here’s a case, for example, where the Second Circuit held that a woman should get Social Security benefits after her husband died, although the feds argued that she was not in fact his “widow” partly because she had remarried (allegedly and temporarily) seven years after he disappeared in Peru. (He also came back, but had never actually been declared dead.)
http://thecourier.com/local-news/2014/12/27/agency-children-of-legally-dead-man-wont-pay/
A looming bill for the children of Donald Miller Jr., Hancock County’s legally dead man, has been dropped.

The Social Security Administration is no longer demanding that Miller’s two daughters repay $47,256 for the death benefits they received after Miller was declared legally dead in 1994, his ex-wife, Robin Miller of Fostoria, said this week.

Previously, the agency forgave the debt of one daughter. It has now decided to write off the other daughter’s bill, Robin Miller said.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
32,895
I was never into the party scene, so I had very limited exposure to the stupid things kids did at parties to impress other kids, most of whom they had at least a passing acquaintance with.

Most of my stupid antics at such things was at a much older age and involved things like pipe bombs to impress a handful of people I had a close acquaintance with. No less stupid, though.

The big difference as I see it is that instead of kids being stupid at the occasional party to impress the folks in their social circle, they feel the need to be stupid on a frequent basis in order to impress people they never have and never will meet.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
32,895
32 years old, and learning to drive? o_O
We've had employees older than that just learning to drive -- of course, they came from countries where they probably would not have learned to drive their entire life had they stayed there. We also saw them making all the stupid mistakes that teenagers make behind the wheel, though usually not for as long. The biggest thing was getting too easily distracted and not maintaining situational awareness.

While a long time ago, my dad got caught one too many times driving without a license when he was fourteen, so the judge gave him a deferred sentence that required my dad to teach my grandmother how to drive so that she could drive him around until he could get his license at 16. He was given a handwritten driving permit that was good for a month, IIRC, that allowed him to drive by himself without restriction (he still needed to get to school) or to carry others to/from school or school events. Other than that, he had to have his mom for the purpose of instruction. They had to appear again in front of the judge, show my him my grandmother's license, and surrender the permit. Which they did.

My grandmother drove my dad around for about a year and a half until he turned 16 and, to the best of my knowledge, she never drove a car again.

That would have been in 1943 and my grandmother was about 43 at the time. She lived another 50 years.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
32,895
BTW, when I was a teenager, one wouldn't be caught dead driving a sedan. All the kids wanted coupes. Seems there are none around anymore save for sports cars.
When I was a teenager all the kids just wanted a car -- and we were NOT picky. The high school parking lot was a real mish mash. Most of the cars were at least ten years old and most were pretty beat up. I had a '71 Ford Country Squire station wagon. The gal that ended up as our class valedictorian drove a rusting VW bug. The other one that always stuck in my memory was the tallest guy in our class (who ended up as the salutatorian) and who stood just under seven feet drove a GMC Gremlin. There were a handful of really nice cars, but I don't recall knowing any of the kids that drove them, so I don't know which cliques, if any, they came from.
 
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