The presumption becomes certainty if the person has not been located for a period of time that has exceeded their probable life span, such as in the case of Amelia Earhart or Jack the Ripper.

However, if there is circumstantial evidence that would lead a reasonable person to believe that the individual is deceased on the balance of probabilities, jurisdictions may agree to issue death certificates without any such order.

More recently, the State of New York issued death certificates for those who perished in the September 11 attacks within days of the tragedy.

The same is usually true of soldiers missing after a major battle, especially if the enemy keeps an accurate record of its prisoners of war.

If the death is thought to have taken place in international waters or in a location without a centralized and reliable police force or vital statistics registration system, other laws may apply.

This meant that their next of kin were denied any bereavement-related entitlements under any pension, life insurance or social welfare scheme.

After ten years from someone's disappearance, a motion to declare the person legally dead can be filed in court.

[citation needed] Declaration of presumed death is stipulated in articles 29–32 of the Polish Civil Code and pronounced as a court judgment.

This kind of application would only have been made sooner than seven years where death was probable, but not definitive (such as an unrecovered plane crash at sea), following an inquest (see below).

Without a body, an inquest relies mostly on evidence provided by the police, and whether senior officers believe the missing person is dead.

Several criteria are evaluated to determine whether a person may be declared legally dead: Professor Jeanne Carriere, in "The Rights of the Living Dead: Absent Persons in Civil Law" (published in the Louisiana Law Review), stated that as of 1990, the number of such cases in the United States was estimated at between 60,000 and 100,000.

[13] According to Edgar Sentell, a retired senior vice-president and general counsel of Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company, almost all states recognize the presumption of death, by statute or judicial recognition of the common law rule.

According to Sentell, courts will consider evidence that the absent person was a fugitive from justice, had money troubles, had a bad relationship, or had no family ties or connection to a community as reasons not to presume death.

[14] A person can be declared legally dead after they are exposed to "imminent peril" and fail to return—as in a plane crash, as portrayed in the movie Cast Away.

In these cases courts generally assume the person was killed, even though the usual waiting time to declare someone dead has not elapsed.

This rule was invoked after the attack on the World Trade Center, so that authorities could release death certificates.

In one case where this occurred, a man named John Burney disappeared in 1976 while having financial problems, and later reappeared in December 1982.

Prisoners of war, people with mental illnesses who become homeless, and, in extremely rare circumstances kidnapping victims, may be located years after their disappearance.