Find someone?

[stevew]

First off, my extended family is wildly incompetent, so just to get that out of the way.

Anyways, my one uncle has no heirs, and was not married. I'm not sure if he had a partner either. My uncle lived in Virginia and the rest of the family lives in PA. My dad is pretty much the only one who talked to him on any kind of semi-regular basis, and my dad called him earlier this year in order to wish him a happy 60th birthday. He did not get in touch with him. Over the next few months, I guess they looked around and tried to dig around in order to find out his whereabouts and came up empty handed. Then someone found some basic information on one of those people search sites that suggests he's dead, as in it shows he died at age 58. But those sites seem pretty scammy and just nickle and dime you for information. You can't really get a death certificate based on this kind of info, and even then you don't know stuff like the date of death in order to follow the proper channels.

I guess my dad, who told me all of this last night, went to Richmond this summer and was attempting to get vital records for my uncle, however he was unsuccessful. Anyways, just to summarize I guess they finally found the proper steps to locate him through the virginia state police and they found out he had died in 2011(oof) in North Carolina.

So anyways, not a loss for me, as we had no relationship. But philosophically it raises some questions.

-Do we die and nobody bothers to notify any of our family? Nobody tracks down the next of kin? I guess it's possible he died with no identification maybe. Still bizarre.

-Is there any reason why I couldn't find any indication of the death at all on the internet? I probably spent 4-5 hours looking through various NC obituaries and such. If we die, the papers don't even bother to report it?

-I don't want it, but what happens to all of his stuff? Surely he had an apartment. I tried to search out some virginia based courts in order to find a record of some sort of possible civil process eviction. Your shit just gets dumped in the trash.

-Why is there no record of death? Is it because someone hasn't filed for the death certificate? Shouldn't the SSA know maybe?


I'm guessing they will eventually file all the proper steps in order to get a death certificate. I'm just puzzled at the whole thing, it would be great if they could just figure out where his remains are and what he wanted done with them. I'm sure the current situation isn't what he wanted. I think a few of my aunts are pretty shook up and would like closure.

Anyways, any help might be great, but I've exhausted a lot of the more popular search options I think.

[Izulde]

His stuff presumably defaulted back to the state, so it was probably either sold or discarded.

If they couldn't identify him, there won't be any death notification, I don't think.

There will be a death certificate somewhere, but if there's no identity, you'd have a much harder time of finding it I think.

Edited to add: If they couldn't identify him, which sounds more and more likely the more I read this, he'll be in a paupers grave somewhere most likely, either cremated or buried depending on the city and state.

Keep in mind, these all just my best guesses, based on google searching I did some months ago about what happens when someone dies alone with no identification and no family or friends.

[M GO BLUE!!!]

Ouch.

[kcchief19]

Obituaries are paid listings, so in this case there would probably not be a listing. About the only thing you could get would be a name listing. Not all papers do that, and they aren't always online.

I'm surprised they didn't make more of an effort to contact a next of kin; unless someone represented themselves as family, or he had someone tell authorities he had no family and they gave up.

Just of note ... You may want to check with the state on unclaimed money funds for him. Every state tracks unclaimed money owed to people by the state. This can include taxes, bank accounts and estate. If they assume he had no relatives, chances are the state may have any money or proceeds he had. We had an uncle who died and ran a check on the state website, and he had several hundred dollars unclaimed -- an old savings account no one knew about and some tax refunds.

[JonInMiddleGA]

As kcchief mentioned, newspaper obits are virtually all paid listings (it's billed to you through the funeral home typically, alongside the other funeral stuff) so depending upon the circumstances of his arrangements it's very possible there wasn't one.

Other than that, coverage will be based on either fame (relative to the area at the very least; i.e. a long-time civic leader in a smaller town or a long'ish running radio/TV personality, etc etc) or circumstances of the death. Die in the middle of the mall of a heart attack while chasing a mugger, that gets crime story coverage, but die in your sleep of natural causes at a motel that usually won't make the papers in most places.