Legal mechanisms for establishing the fact of death and declaring a person dead

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive study of two legal mechanisms used to confirm the termination of an individual's existence - establishment of the fact of his/her death and declaration of death. Given the current context of martial law in Ukraine, special attention is paid to the specifics of the functioning of these institutions in emergency conditions, in particular, in the absence of official documents, destruction of registration systems and difficulties in proving the actual circumstances of a person's death. It is determined that although both procedures may have a common goal - the state registration of death and the implementation of the relevant legal consequences, their legal nature and conditions of application differ significantly.

The methodological basis of the study is a combination of general scientific and special legal methods, in particular: formal legal, systemic and structural, comparative legal, and case law analysis methods.

The results of the study demonstrate significant differences between the institutions of establishing the fact of death and declaring an individual dead in terms of the criteria of grounds, legal nature, admissible evidence and consequences. Establishment of the fact of death is a way of legal recording of the objectively proven fact of a person's death based on a set of reliable evidence, while declaring a person dead is based on the legal assumption of death.

It is noted that in the context of hostilities and occupation of certain territories, a court decision is often the only real basis for officially establishing the fact of death and registering the relevant event by the Civil Registry Office. The article analyses the current civil and procedural legislation of Ukraine and summarises the position of the Supreme Court regarding the admissibility of documents issued in the temporarily occupied territories. The author emphasises the importance of an individual approach to the assessment of evidence in relevant cases, taking into account the humanitarian context and the real capabilities of applicants acting in extraordinary circumstances.