h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

to fake your own death ?

no, i'm not planning it. i just saw it in a movie and wondered what the legal consequences would be.

I'd imagine it would depend on whether it was for financial gain. If it was planned with other party(ies) for insurance payout, then it would probably be fraud, I'd guess.

GT

Isn't it considered fraud?

It's possible though. Especially if you have a hefty Life Insurance policy. Make sure you have an accomplice in the ambulance/morgue department. Tickets to Mexico. Change your identity. Off you go. Not too hard.

lets assume the person has no life insurance. that they just want to disappear from their life so they fake their death.

Well, he'd still need a bit of cash to pay off the other people. You couldn't do it alone...you'd be traceable otherwise...

If there's no fraudant financial gain, there's no victim and no crime. I can see nothing illegal about it.

GT

lets also assume the person has plenty of money. the question really is, is it legal ? so that excludes bribing govt officials etc for paperwork.

You could do it solo if there was to be evidence pointing to death, but no body found.
Presumably you would then have to create a new identity which would be complicated but not impossible. I guess if you later decided to come back, there might be some legal charge if only wasting police time (on investigating your disappearance).

Presumably, to fake your own death, you have to make people believe that you have died, which may lead to an inquest and all kinds of other legal stuff, and that might qualify as fraud.

I believe that it's perfectly legal under British law to use any name at all as long is it's not for reasons of fraud (Bob Willis, for instance, added the name 'Dylan' to his other middle name, and uses it as if it were on his birth certificate), so if you do that and take up a new identity, I don't think that it would be against the law.

not only is it perfectly legal to use any name you like in the uk, including a different one for each day of the week, but you can make it official for around £25 and change it by deed poll.

this then becomes the name on your passport, driving license, etc.

it is also not illegal to just go missing.

you can walk out of the house, and never come back, as long as you are not causing certain problems for yourelf by doing so.

an example of a problem you can cause yourself is walking out on unpaid debt.

The problem comes in the method of faking your own death...

You can be charged (i think) with wasting the polices time - so if they spent time investigating your 'death' you'd have a problem if they ran across you...

Then there's the problem of legally obtaining a new identity... unless you wanted to exist without a legal identity (which makes things like passports - bank accounts - etc very difficult) then you'd either need to change your name by deed poll (which would then leave a paper trail from your old name to your new one) or you'd have to do something illegal to establish a new name...

Just disappearing and calling yourself Fred Smith isn't illegal... however, if you have to obtain ID for Fred Smith, you might end up breaking the law to get it!