How do I find out whether someone is still living or has died?

[AFrustratingSituation]

What is the quickest, cheapest, easiest and most straightforward way of checking whether someone is still living or has died?

Thank you.

I presume the OP is in the UK.

I am dying (pardon the pun) to know the story OP. I understand you don't want to tell us but I just want to say you are torturing nosy buggers like me 🤣

Not sure if anyone's suggested?

https://www.findmypast.com/

HRTHT.

Op I have private messaged you.

A few years ago, my DM decided on a whim to search her sister’s name. Having an unusual middle name helped.

She found that she died 2 years prior.

That would explain things. As three years earlier we stopped getting Xmas cards then a few years before it was her useless husband who wrote cards.

Had MND

If you know their name and city where they were born, you can put an age range on Ancestry of us to 10 years. So guess at, for example 1948, but do plus or minus 10 years. You can then search through, it might be lots of answers but as I said I have found people despite not thinking it possible. Good luck!

If you know their full name and other details then you can search for them on the probate register.

This won't give you a definitive answer as to whether they have died, but it at least will tell you whether they have died and left a will that has gone through probate, which apparently is about 50% of people in the UK who die.

Contact the estate agent who sold the house and ask whether they can recall the property "and if you think it's likely they left a forwarding address, or is it the case that they passed away or went into care...?". I doubt the agents are allowed to tell you much, and they certainly won't be able to tell you where this person has moved to, but if you're nice to them you might be able to read their reaction enough to give you your answer. Like if they say "oh, I'm sure you could write to the current owners and ask them to forward mail on" or something.

Obviously this works better with a family-run rural estate agents than like Foxtons or whatever.

In this episode of The Willpower Detectives (Radio 4 documentary), they found an elderly relative by calling lots of care homes in the area.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0029hdg
Tell them 'hi, I'm trying to contact my uncle/aunt X, I've been told he lives there, is that right?' If they're being weird claiming GDPR then they should at least be able to tell you that someone does not live there.

You can definitely find the birth certificate with the info you have (unless it's something generic like John Smith born in the 1950s in London) which will give you a date of birth. It'll just take time.

Were they not born before that? You use FreeBMD to find their DOB. You then use that info on other sites to find them. Bear in mind that different ancestry sites can have different records, ie one site might not have them but another does, so you need to check all the main ones. Some also have newspaper records where you can search for their name.

Honestly I don’t know how you manage without rip.ie website we use in Ireland

We use the .gov.uk site where we can see if a death has been registered.

I don't know why people are making this so complicated. If the person died in the UK, the death will have been registered and can be searched for on the .gov site and a certificate ordered. As can births and marriages/civil partnerships.

I've just used the general register link from above, registered and put in the last date i knew a person was alive and their name (it allowed a +/- 2 years of the assumed death date) I could see straight away the right person I was looking for (knew the council which would have registered them) could you try that?

General Register Office - Online Indexes - Search the GRO Online Indexes

I found my late half-uncle in London on GRO but he had an unusual name and I knew his year of birth. Not so easy when you're looking for a Margaret Jones or a William Smith...

Yes. I searched for when they died initially. I went back to search for them to find a birth date and couldn't find that either

Are you sure they were born in the U.K.? If so, try varying your search in case their name is listed in a slightly different way, eg John Jack Jones might be listed as John Jones or Jack Jones - that kind of thing. You can also search Births on other websites to see if you can find them.

Sounds like an abusive boyfriend or stalker searching for his ex. Creepy as fuck.

If the person didn't want anything to do with you, leave it alone.

I found out that a great uncle had died by searching on Ancestry - there was a death certificate registered.

I found out that one of my grandfathers had died 3 years earlier by phoning a relative (who would have known him but who I didn’t really know myself) & basically just asking her about him. Then I had to tell my Dad, who was one of his sons. That was not pleasant.

Sorry for the confusion. I wasn't answering the op. I was responding to another poster on the thread.

I was in a similar position. Around 2005 an elderly relative suddenly ceased contact with everyone, including a similarly aged relative she had previously been close to. She had moved a few years previously to be closer to her siblings and it would have involved an overnight stay for us to go and check. She had family close by but they were quite insular so we assumed she had died and they didn't contact us. We continued to send cards for a few years.

A few years ago I tried looking to see when she had died. I found the electoral rolls for her area were online (ancestry I think) and found she was mentioned under the address we'd known until about 2012. I also discovered the online gro index. You can only search for death records in two year windows, so I started from about 2010 and went up until the present. Nothing under her surname that was anywhere near close. Another dead end, and we wondered whether she had married. No joy looking for obituaries or even wedding notices!

A few months ago I was on the gro index once more and had a look for her - this time a hit. She had died 18 months previously, was registered under both her first name and the name she had used for most of her life. She had died a couple of months after her sister in law who she'd been close to for decades, and who often wondered what had happened to her - we had all assumed she'd died at least a decade before.

Sorry, bit of an essay, but those were the steps I used and had an answer in the end.

I'm not but, as I said earlier, I can see why it would look like that. I'm not going to elaborate and I'm not going to be baited into doing so either.

Tbf, I could be anyone and give any reason - it wouldn't necessarily be the truth anyway. This is the Internet.

I really appreciate all the suggestions and also other people's experiences. I just didn't really know where to start. But I've got a couple of ideas now. Thanks.

My mum was friends with two other ladies. Let’s call them Nancy and Heather (not real names) Flat shared etc. Then DM married DF and the two moved back to their home cities around 400 miles apart. It was my DM birthday and not received a card and a gift voucher from one of them.

DM contacted Heather and asked if heard anything from Nancy recently. No. Plus it was her birthday 5 weeks after DM. Both agreed to send a card. The card that my DM sent was returned with letter box taped off. Strange.

Heather put the wrong door number on which was Nancy’s neighbour. As Heather used address stickers with her phone number on them. Nancy’s neighbour rang Heather and told her what happened. Nancy slipped down the stairs as wearing flip flops. Hit her head at the bottom of the stairs on the hard floor. Wasn’t discovered until a few days later.

I don’t know if we have ever heard about Nancy if Heather didn’t put the wrong address on the envelope

If they died in England and wales you can use the .gov.uk site. Not uk wide.

I had someone contact me on LinkedIn once asking if someone who used to work for my organisation had died, as they were still registered on there on my company name. They had actually left years earlier, but didn’t update their profile. I guess this won’t help you if they are in their late 70s though, as wouldn’t have worked for some time. But you never know, someone might have kept in touch and know.

No she's not.

Just read between the lines.