Presumed dead after 7 years, remarriage, children etc - then they return. What happens?

[HmmmCat]

I’ve been reading Far From the Madding Crowd, and it made me wonder…

Say a person disappears and is legally presumed dead, their spouse remarries, has more children and the new spouse adopts the previous children. Then the presumed dead spouse returns. What happens?

Is the new marriage annulled? In which case is the new child legally the child of the original spouse (if it was the husband who disappeared)? What about the previous children, is their adoption annulled?

And what about their estate? If it has been distributed among their heirs, can they claim it back again? What if it’s been spent?

It's the plot of the Doris Day film, Move Over Darling - she's on a desert island and her husband assumes she's dead and marries someone else - then she reappears

I remember that! Didn’t it turn out that his mum knew he was still alive?

Where have you heard that?

Because it's not true. It can take up to 6 months to get the certificate of presumed death, (after the 7 year deadline,) but not 'years and years....'

.

I've just been looking into the process for declaring someone dead and it doesn't sound like it is too complicated after the 7 years have passed but I was quite surprised to find you have to pay £528!

Blimey, what a bloody rip off! For a sodding certificate!

Nope that's just to start the process from the website it also looks like you have to pay another £11 for the certificate!

You also have to put an advert in a local newspaper which sounds very old fashioned. I'm not even sure my local area has a newspaper any more.

Oh right. Thank you. x

Either way it sounds very bloody expensive and the newspaper advert sounds quite unnecessary in the age of the internet.

Yikes! Who needs husbands like that!

My mum's grandad wanted her granny to give him a divorce. She refused, he ran off with the other woman. My g granny just remarried 7 years later without declaring him dead - in fact, she knew he was still alive! She described herself as a widow on the marriage certificate. Everyone in the family knew, but didn't dob her in, as her first husband was truly awful.

I know, I didn’t really get that bit either. You can’t have two husbands though and the first marriage would not have been ended (ie there was no death if the first husband turned out to be alive, and divorce was only available on the grounds of adultery in England - desertion was only a grounds after 1937).
So as I understood the article, you would have a defence against the crime of bigamy, but the first marriage would stand.
Presumably after 1937 you could anyway get divorced if the person had disappeared on the grounds of desertion.

I think with life insurance, the beneficiary gets to keep it unless they obtained it by fraud, aka were in on the scam. I an not sure what happenes if the returner wants to re insure their life though. I knew a bloke, ex work colleague of my husband, who had some kind of serious heart condition, so serious that he got his life insurance paid out under the terminal illness clause. Miraculously he recovered and the insurers said that he was entitled to keep the insurance payout but he'd be unable to get life insurance again. This isn't a "friend of a friend told me" story. I actually met the bloke at a company event.

Richey from the Manics was very poorly when he went missing. I recall his car was found though. I think it was pretty likely he died. Poor bloke.

I get our local paper I'm going to start scrutinising the official announcements / ads from now on.

Re-partnering while your earlier spouse was still alive was quite common in those circumstances. eg with transportation to Australia, both the transported and the left behind often repartnered (and had kids) while knowing their earlier spouse was still alive. At least some of those then went further to remarriage while their earlier spouse was still living on the other side of the world. Very few were reunited though - your ancestor must have been unusual.

Not really surprising given the shock horror cost of divorce at the time.

I think they do really comprehensive ‘proof of life’ checks - banks/NHS/passport/DVLA/benefits - anything with an ID number before anyone can be presumed to have died. So just not being around would not be enough.

I’m widowed and my late husband is very much definitely dead (been there, did the CPR, got the trauma) but this is still my recurring nightmare!

Didn’t this happen a few times after the first and second world wars? The husband would be missing, presumed dead then turn up much later.

Also the plot of the book When You Disappeared by John Marrs. At the point the wife remarries, she has found out that the first husband didn’t die on the day he left the family home, but has had no more leads since then, so can’t say for sure whether he’s dead or not by that point.

Richie Edwards.
He went missing and has never been found, but his car was found parked at the services on the Severn Bridge, it is assumed he went into the river, he had mental health struggles.
He was finally declared dead after 7 years, so then his estate could be resolved. Just heartbreaking for his family. There have been various alleged sightings of him abroad over the years.

Which was a remake of the Cary Grant, Irene Dunne movie My Favourite Wife. Great film!

You can be declared dead less than 7 years after going missing. The canoe man got his wife to do that. There's a court procedure.

Richey Edwards' family waited longer than 7 years to declare him dead but it became very difficult administratively to keep him as a missing person.

Didn’t this happen to Frank Butcher in EastEnders?

😂

we have a case in the wider familythe other way round.

man was prisoner of war and after release stayed in the country, declared himself a widower and rmarried.

Have watch of 'Canoe Man'. That will be different because Anne Darwin knew her husband wasn't dead.