As an intensive care unit director, I dealt with similar cases, and certain themes recur. The interests of the family are understandable; it is extremely difficult for a family to consider a loved one dead, when that person is still warm, with a beating heart. Moreover, brain death is not a universally recognized concept among all religions. That said, the proceedings that allowed Jahi's transfer were in error.
However understandable the family's interests, in this case they should not supersede the law. Once declared legally dead, Jahi should have been removed from the ventilator. There are other points to be made. The medical community must clarify for the public and media what brain death means. It should be emphasized it is different from coma and vegetative states. In their cases, the families should have much greater legal standing in determining the discontinuation of life support. Besides explaining these differences to the public, physicians should be cognizant of the potential conflict of interest between liberalizing the definition of death and organ donation.
Finally, deeper sensitivity to family concerns is crucial. According to the San Francisco Chronicle website, Jahi's relatives met with hospital officials and said a doctor told them Jahi is "dead, dead, dead, dead" and that further medical care was no longer needed. The team is available around the clock if you would like to talk about how you are feeling throughout this process. Would you like a copy of this information in a PDF? If so, click here to download it. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.
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Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. You might have to deal with the will, money and property of the person who's died if you're a close friend or relative, or the executor of the will. To help us improve GOV. It will take only 2 minutes to fill in. Cookies on GOV. UK We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
Accept additional cookies Reject additional cookies View cookies. Hide this message. Part of What to do when someone dies: step by step. Get a declaration of presumed death. Make a claim for a declaration of presumed death You can make a claim yourself or use a legal representative. Make your claim. By using our website you agree to our use of cookies as set out in our Privacy Policy. In a typical situation one of the roles of a funeral director is to collect the information which is used to populate the death certificate, which is issued by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
It is therefore important to make sure the information given to the funeral director is correct — if the death certificate is incorrect or incomplete this might cause issues later with obtaining a grant of probate or a grant of letters of administration. If someone has died in a nursing home or a hospital, the process for getting a death certificate is usually straightforward. There are systems in place to notify the relevant authorities because it's such a routine occurrence.
If someone dies outside of a controlled environment like a nursing home or hospital, there's a slightly different procedure. If the death was expected — perhaps if someone had been in the terminal stages of a terminal illness and wished to die at home — the person's doctor should be contacted. If the death was unexpected or apparently unnatural, the police should be called and this will likely result in the Coroner commencing an investigation.
If the exact cause of death is unknown there will be an interim death certificate issued while further investigations are undertaken by the Coroner. These further investigations may take several months or even years before a final death certificate can be issued.
In some cases the Police will obtain a series of affidavits written declarations about who was last to see the person alive and who was the first to find the person deceased.
All of the above is based on the assumption that there is a body — but sometimes there isn't. If someone has gone missing and is presumed to be dead, but there is no identified body to prove it, neither the Police nor the Coroner have the power to make a determination that a death has actually occurred. The investigation will remain open until a body is found and identified.
This means that the administration of the person's estate will not be able to proceed until a body is found, which may take years — if a body is found at all. A person is presumed to be alive until they are declared dead. Until then nobody has authority to deal with the deceased person's assets whether owned individually or jointly , superannuation or life insurance, and it may not be possible to replace the person as controller of a trust or company.
The assets are effectively "frozen" and no one has authority to deal with them. Depending on the circumstances, this can result in difficulty and hardship for the person's family, employees and creditors. If the person had made a power of attorney before they went missing, then in some respects things can "carry on" as if the person were still alive. Fortunately, there is a legal process for declaring a missing person to have died.
Under a combination of the Probate Rules SA and the Births, Deaths and Marriages Act SA , a person can apply to the Supreme Court of South Australia and essentially ask the Court to make an Order for permission to swear death — ie an Order that the death of the missing person occurred on a particular date — and then that the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages must produce a death certificate on this basis.
The Court requires evidence regarding the background of the person; the circumstances of their disappearance and the account of any witnesses to the disappearance or the last person s to see the missing person alive, as the case may be.
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