Dying Alone: What Can Happen & The Hermit Millionaire

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~ NOTE: Lengthy article covering some (unpleasant) realities of deceased persons, and financial/estate info.

- "The Mystery of the Millionaire Hermit," Bloomberg News, April 27, 2019.

He spent years scrimping and saving. But without a will, where’s his money going? On the afternoon of Aug. 22, 2015, Dale Tisserand and Melani Rodrigue opened the front door to a small white house in Corning, Calif., a town of 7,500 about 115 miles north of Sacramento. The women, who’d been given the keys by local police, are investigators for the office of the Tehama County Public Administrator. They knew the owner had died in the house the previous week and that his name was Eugene Brown.

The neighborhood mail carrier was the one who’d called the police. Every day, Brown would wait for her in a chair by his door, and the two would exchange pleasantries. But for the past five days, there’d been no sign of him. Police did a welfare check and discovered his body in a pool of dried blood by the toilet. Members of the coroner’s office who were dispatched to the house determined that he died of a stroke, but not before breaking his nose in a nasty fall. They did a quick search for a will and contact information for family members and friends — return addresses on envelopes, phone numbers jotted on scraps of paper. Not finding anything, they called Tisserand and Rodrigue.

*Many counties in the U.S. have public administrators, though a lot of people don’t know they exist. They operate within the murky ecosystem of public agencies and private businesses that kick into gear when someone dies: locksmiths, biohazard and trauma cleanup services, trash haulers, auctioneers, real estate agents, courts, attorneys and banks. Tisserand and Rodrigue were in Brown’s house to locate his will and heirs, which can be difficult when people die alone. They would also oversee his estate. Even a simple death, something peaceful in your sleep, requires the assistance of an awful lot of people.

Public administrators in California usually report to the district attorney’s office, the sheriff or some other county agency. Only a few, such as Rodrigue, head standalone departments.. Upon receiving Brown’s case from the coroner, Rodrigue and Tisserand took their usual first step of arranging for a locksmith to meet them at the house; changing the locks lets them take control of the property and ward off squatters. They rerouted Brown’s mail to their office, since a get-well card or bank statement could provide valuable information about relatives and assets. Then they began their search.
The vast majority of houses Rodrigue and Tisserand see are in severe disrepair. They often find themselves wading through the detritus of a life that had begun decomposing years, if not decades, before they arrived...

Read More, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-27/the-mystery-of-the-millionaire-hermit