Death (law)

Death in law is the status assigned when a person is determined to have died under applicable rules. It establishes when legal rights, duties, and relationships tied to life end or change.

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Determination of Death Act: A United States model law defining death by irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or all brain functions. It supplies statutory criteria used by many U.S. jurisdictions to determine legal death.
Probate: The court-supervised process for validating a will and administering a deceased person's estate. Legal death commonly triggers probate and the administration of the estate.
Cardiac death: Death determined by the permanent cessation of cardiac activity and circulation. It contrasts with neurological criteria that can establish death while circulation is maintained artificially.
Brain death controversy: Ongoing scientific, ethical, and legal disputes about whether and how neurological criteria establish death. These disputes test whether existing legal definitions remain coherent as medical knowledge and practice change.
Brain death: The irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brainstem, under a commonly used medical definition. It is one of the principal medical findings that can satisfy legal criteria for death.
Inheritance: The transfer of property or rights from a deceased person to heirs or beneficiaries. The date and legal recognition of death determine when succession can take effect.
Persistent vegetative state: A condition of wakefulness without behavioral evidence of awareness after severe brain injury. It can involve profound unconsciousness without meeting legal criteria for death.
Organ donation after circulatory death: Organ recovery after death is determined by permanent cessation of circulation, subject to safeguards and protocols. Its timing raises questions about how legal death criteria interact with organ-preservation procedures.
Death certificate: An official record documenting a person's death and associated details, including its date and cause. It records the determination and enables institutions to act on the person's changed legal status.
Survivorship: The legal condition of outliving another person, relevant to rights that depend on who died first. When the order of deaths is uncertain, survivorship rules can decide property and inheritance claims.