I'm officially dead, although I'm alive

March 16, 2018 2:02 PM

Constantin Reliu asked a Romanian court to overturn his death certificate. The court told him he was too late and would have to remain officially deceased. (SL Guardian)
posted by stillmoving (45 comments total)

Could he be declared undead?
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:09 PM on March 16, 2018 [15 favorites]

Danny Ocean: "...and the last one we need for the crew: Constantin Reliu."
Rusty: "What's he do? Hacker? Former secret police?"
Danny: "He's legally dead."
Rusty: [whistles] "Nice."
posted by griphus at 2:15 PM on March 16, 2018 [57 favorites]

Could he be declared undead?

An undead Romanian you say? Too bad he doesn't appear to be from the Transylvania region.
posted by jedicus at 2:18 PM on March 16, 2018 [26 favorites]

Given that he wandered off, broke contact with his family, and left his wife no other choice than to declare him dead....

Harsh but fair bro.
posted by wotsac at 2:18 PM on March 16, 2018 [16 favorites]

For tax reasons?
posted by tobascodagama at 2:20 PM on March 16, 2018 [16 favorites]

I suppose he's free to steal anything he wants, then, since a dead man can't be convicted of crimes?
posted by musofire at 2:23 PM on March 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

I don't know how you landed on 'steal' instead of 'assassinate' but sure, he's free to steal anything he wants.
posted by komara at 2:27 PM on March 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

He’s also not allowed to tell tales, but did the Guardian respect that?
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:27 PM on March 16, 2018 [45 favorites]

Constantin Reliu = Tilt On Insurance = I Turn Nonelastic = Until Canines Rot
posted by lalochezia at 2:32 PM on March 16, 2018 [10 favorites]

In his house, dead Reliu waits dreaming.
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
Burma-Shave. (;,;)^
posted by Schadenfreude at 2:33 PM on March 16, 2018 [36 favorites]

The ruling is apparently final and cannot be appealed against

Not so fast. Romania is in the EU, and what's the first item in the Charter of Fundamental Rights? The right to life. This clearly needs to go to Strasbourg.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:35 PM on March 16, 2018 [15 favorites]

Can you be convicted of murdering a dead man? If not, he probably should avoid stealing anything (or annoying someone at a bar, or critiquing Putin, for example).
posted by el io at 2:35 PM on March 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

Can you convict a dead man of anything at all?
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:37 PM on March 16, 2018

Why is there a time limit on contesting a death certificate? How does that make any sense at all?

That said, this guy sounds like kind of a jerk to say the least. I don't have a lot of time for men who abandon their families.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 2:39 PM on March 16, 2018 [6 favorites]

eponysterical post right here
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 2:42 PM on March 16, 2018 [20 favorites]

You don't need to convict a dead man of anything, because the only right he has left is the right to be forgotten.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 2:53 PM on March 16, 2018

What is dead may never die.
posted by komara at 3:01 PM on March 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Can you be convicted of murdering a dead man?

Fool! You cannot kill what is already dead!
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:07 PM on March 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why is there a time limit on contesting a death certificate? How does that make any sense at all?

Think pension rights. Think property. Think in terms of his will. Think in terms of whether his wife is still legally married, or a widow (which changes the legal requirements if she wants to marry someone else).

Normally death is pretty obvious (there's a death certificate and a corpse) but sometimes (body lost at sea, person wanders off) there's no conclusive proof, in which case we get edge cases like this.

Anticipation: I don't know if he's a jerk or not. The news article implies he cut off contact with his family deliberately and voluntarily ... but desertion is grounds for divorce in Romania; so he probably didn't do it simply to get out of paying maintenance (which his wife would be entitled to in event of divorce). The picture simply gets weirder and weirder the longer you look at it.
posted by cstross at 3:08 PM on March 16, 2018 [6 favorites]

Found an article stating
"Under Romanian law, Reliu can still file for an annulment of the death certificate in the same court where the 2016 decision was issued, regardless of his rejected appeal."
posted by readinghippo at 3:32 PM on March 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

"Under Romanian law, Reliu can still file for an annulment of the death certificate in the same court where the 2016 decision was issued, regardless of his rejected appeal."

If that's right, it vaguely suggests that this is more likely to be about property than identity. I can imagine a legal setup where never having been legally dead is less advantageous than no longer being legally dead; for example if it means that marital property has lawfully passed to the "surviving" spouse and can't be recovered by annulling the declaration. Speculation, of course, but it might make some sense of the rather threadbare reports we've seen.
posted by howfar at 3:41 PM on March 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'll have to find a private client (which mostly means estate planning, so I reckon they'd be best placed to know. As an aside, when I was doing the legal practice course the person leading that elective sold it as being "the specialism for you if you like money and old people") specialist to tell me what the ramifications of this sort of situation would be in the UK.
posted by howfar at 3:46 PM on March 16, 2018

While I'd be interested to know more about the system in Romania, I'm now reading Scotland's government information Get a missing person declared dead and a Straight Dope piece re: the USA.
posted by readinghippo at 4:00 PM on March 16, 2018

Pretty sure this is the plot for a Kafka novel.
posted by Fizz at 4:18 PM on March 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

Since Constantin Reliu is dead, he cannot steal, murder or be murdered, etc; but it also follows that John Doe here is not Constantin Reliu, merely a person of doubtful citizenship using an assumed name, but subject to normal legal constraints.
I’m just puzzled about how someone who can’t prove his identity can nevertheless take a case through the Romanian court system...
posted by Segundus at 4:28 PM on March 16, 2018

Pretty sure this is the plot for a Kafka novel.

also at least a chapter from Catch-22 ...
posted by philip-random at 4:41 PM on March 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

I'm betting howfar may have it right; that this is about not screwing over the people who made decisions based on him being declared dead. I.e., any inherited property remains inherited, possibly his ex-wife doesn't have to file for divorce or have a current marriage invalidated. So he can get himself established as alive again for the purposes of going forward via annulment, but no longer has legal interest in anything involved in his old life.
posted by tavella at 5:02 PM on March 16, 2018 [5 favorites]

I once had a missing person declared judicially dead. He'd been missing for 20 years, so he was either legit dead or hiding very effectively. His widow was in poor health and really needed access to his social security and pension because she could no longer work.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:34 PM on March 16, 2018 [8 favorites]

Still summoned for jury duty tho.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 6:59 PM on March 16, 2018

EMPLOYEE (on phone)
                    This is accounting, sir. You enquired about
                    an employee of ours, an Agent Richard Gill?
GILL
                    Yes.
EMPLOYEE
                    Our records indicate he's deceased.
GILL
                    I'm what?

Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The: "That said, this guy sounds like kind of a jerk to say the least. I don't have a lot of time for men who abandon their families."

Or he was running from an abuser. Not a lot of details in the story.
posted by Mitheral at 7:36 PM on March 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Same thing happened on an episode of All in the Family. I remember Archie getting mad at the person from Vital Records he'd just been transferred to on the phone and yelling, "This is Archie Bunker, calling you from the grave. Wish you was here."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:32 PM on March 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Given that he’s saying he thinks his wife got it so she could marry again, my assumption is that she inherited property which she and her new husband have now been using, and he’s trying to have that undone/get the house back/punish the spouse for the remarriage.
posted by corb at 7:58 AM on March 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

Or he was running from an abuser. Not a lot of details in the story.

Given that they'd been living in different countries for 7 years when he vanished that seems like a somewhat unusual conjecture.
posted by howfar at 8:08 AM on March 17, 2018 [3 favorites]

According to this NPR piece on the case, he left Romania for Turkey when he learned of infidelity on the part of his wife.
posted by stillmoving at 8:41 AM on March 17, 2018

stepping back from the guy's motivations for a moment, what's really going on here is a triumph of bureaucratic convenience/intransigence over reality, which yes, is so fucking terrifying it's hilarious. Constantin Reliu may be very many things, but one he's not is dead. For the state bureaucracy to insist that he is, is to insist loud and clear that it's officially absurd (and for all the world to see now that this has gone viral), which is funny ha-ha, but it's also backed up (as all official state policy is) by legal, police and ultimately military power.
posted by philip-random at 10:03 AM on March 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I suppose I was jumping to conclusions a bit. Deadbeat dads are on my mind recently for a few reasons right now and that probably colored my thinking. It seems distressingly common for dudes to decide that it's all too much for them and just nope out on their families.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:31 AM on March 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

For the state bureaucracy to insist that he is, is to insist loud and clear that it's officially absurd

Thankfully The Guardian links to its source article from a Romanian quality newspaper, Adevârul, and Google Translate provides something legible, including the key wording

However, the Vaslui Tribunal dismissed the petition as inadmissible from a procedural point of view. Magistrates say that the appeal was made almost two years after the sentence was pronounced, which is why it can not be considered, according to the law.

It's a pain in the arse, or worse, for all concerned, especially as he's stuck living at his mother's house in Romania with no source of income until he can get his death certificate annulled and get a passport. And they're down to their last few charismatic megafauna.

With the last three lions she had in the house, I took some chicken backs, and I did something to eat.

(Note to Google Translate: people are more likely to be talking about their local currency than the thing it's named after)
posted by ambrosen at 11:18 AM on March 17, 2018 [9 favorites]

I'm not at all claiming expertise, but as I understand, broadly, Romania is not a wealthy country, nor full of employment opportunities, and lots of people (especially men) leave to find work elsewhere. They often take sub-standard employment (legally or not) that pays loads more than they'd make at home, and because their families are dependent on the money, it's very difficult to come back.
posted by stillmoving at 12:21 PM on March 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

For the state bureaucracy to insist that he is, is to insist loud and clear that it's officially absurd (and for all the world to see now that this has gone viral), which is funny ha-ha, but it's also backed up (as all official state policy is) by legal, police and ultimately military power.

I think it's becoming pretty clear that the state is not refusing to acknowledge that he's alive, but rather refusing to allow him to assert that he was wrongfully declared dead. Those seem like the same thing, but there are good reasons for that not to be the case. Law requires certainty, sometimes at the expense of justice. That is, for example, a key reason why double jeopardy is typically avoided. There are always time limits for appeals, because at a certain point people have to be able to rely upon a matter as being settled. In this case, it seems that Mr Reliu has a legal means of avoiding being classified as dead, but not the legal consequences of having been classified as dead. That may well suck for him, and it may well be unfair, but I don't think it's sensible to treat it like some sort of Hellerian nightmare.

The English language reporting around this very much follows the "aren't foreigners stupid/funny" line that crops up all too often in reporting legal proceedings that occur outside of familiar jurisdictions. At the moment that's annoying me more than what seems to be the actual story.
posted by howfar at 4:12 PM on March 17, 2018 [7 favorites]

I think it's becoming pretty clear that the state is not refusing to acknowledge that he's alive, but rather refusing to allow him to assert that he was wrongfully declared dead.

if that's the case, then all of this starts to get more rational
posted by philip-random at 5:13 PM on March 17, 2018

The English language reporting around this very much follows the "aren't foreigners stupid/funny" line

To be fair, they often don't stray too far from this with reporting issues in the Anglosphere. Although more often they go for an "aren't defendants/litigants stupid" angle, and certainly in the UK, avoid mentioning that the stupid thing's happening in the US, with its 5× larger cohort of stupid people (the cohort of non-stupid people is also 5× the size, of course – it's just a much bigger country), and slightly different laws.
posted by ambrosen at 5:25 PM on March 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

musofire: But he'd be fair game for superheroes like Captain Romania.
posted by BiggerJ at 7:12 PM on March 17, 2018

Yeah, it sounds like he can APPEAL being declared dead through a court procedure, but he can't just challenge it and have it immediately reversed because the time limit on that has lapsed.

Which is sucky for him because court procedures take a long time! But he disappeared long enough and comprehensively enough to be declared dead and you don't want randos turning up and being like "NO I'M TOTALLY THAT GUY GIVE ME ALL HIS PROPERTY." (The Return of Martin Guerre is the canonical example of an imposter returning and taking over a dead man's life.)

I actually did a big research paper on agunot (or עגונות, literally "those who are chained") in law school -- in Jewish law, women whose husbands have disappeared and are probably dead, but there's no body and no witnesses. (It can also refer to women who have a clear case for divorce but can't get a get, either because he's incapacitated or an asshole.) In ancient times it was mostly women whose husbands were traders (and traveled far for long periods and maybe never came back) and the Talmudic examples have a lot to do with sunken ships, or men who were soldiers. But the Jewish law on agunot became tragically relevant after the Holocaust, when families were separated and a woman who survived might never know her husband's fate, and then again after 9/11 when many dead never had "proof" they were dead.

Anyway, having someone declared legally dead has this incredibly long and complicated pedigree, more than 2500 years, not just in Jewish law but in most legal systems, and it pops up as relevant after many tragedies, wars, and disasters. It's kind-of a terrible area of law, but it's also a vast comfort to survivors, because it gives them access to the (probably) dead person's pension and property and other benefits, and allows the survivors closure and lets them move on -- including to another marriage. I'm not sure I ever did anything else as a lawyer that solved as many real problems as declaring someone dead did.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:31 PM on March 17, 2018 [9 favorites]

"Anyway, having someone declared legally dead has this incredibly long and complicated pedigree, more than 2500 years, not just in Jewish law but in most legal systems, and it pops up as relevant after many tragedies, wars, and disasters. It's kind-of a terrible area of law, but it's also a vast comfort to survivors, because it gives them access to the (probably) dead person's pension and property and other benefits, and allows the survivors closure and lets them move on -- including to another marriage. I'm not sure I ever did anything else as a lawyer that solved as many real problems as declaring someone dead did."

And that, sir, is why I really love attorneys. Despite all the jokes, the real purpose of your average attorney is to help people.
posted by corvikate at 10:22 AM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

"Given that he wandered off, broke contact with his family, and left his wife no other choice than to declare him dead....

Harsh but fair bro."

It's called going out for cigarettes and it doesn't mean they are dead, it means you are dead to them.
posted by GoblinHoney at 3:17 PM on March 21, 2018