same in Iceland. When my dad (actually) died, everything in his life ground to an instant halt. As soon as he was registered as deceased in the government system, bank accounts froze, we automatically got letters from a bunch of agencies explaining that they got an update on his status, and in many cases those letters had instructions for next of kin to resolve matters, like collecting life insurance, etc.

The biggest hassle we faced, which wasn't that big really, was going to the bank, with our passports and the death certificate, and asking to have the money transferred to my mom's account. His current bank was even able to contact other banks and we found that he had a couple of old accounts in other banks that we didn't know about. They gave us documents to go there and get the remaining balanced moved.

Getting his online accounts sorted, however, was a different matter. Please leave some kind of "in case I'm dead" envelope for your next of kin with passwords and a description of your digital footprint. It was incredibly frustrating trying to get access to his photo albums and documents on G Drive, for example. I managed to dig out a password at the end, but it took me weeks of trying all sorts of things.

Whoa, how'd you find the password?

Yes, this kind of thing must require some preconditions. Among them, I expect, a lack of reliable ID among the poor. Look at it from the government official's point of view: Someone claims to be a person declared dead, because that person owned land. What proof can they offer?

That’s not the point of TFA! They’re talking about people who get victimized by people who convince the state that they’re dead when they’re not.

I was specifically addressing the problem in the article where people are surprised to come back to their property to find out that "they're dead".

I'm saying that because in Sweden you IMMEDIATELY find out that "you're dead", you won't have e.g. the problem where your property was actually transferred to "your widow", as was mentioned in the article, before you even know that a process has started.

It's like an alarm. Sure, it won't prevent all burglaries, but (assuming the alarm works, in this analogy, and calls you) you'll find out immediately that someone is in the process of screwing you.

So yes, actually. I think a major enabler for this problem is the fact that in India you DON'T know if you got declared dead. Which really helps the ability to create this kind of fraud.

That's not the point of the comments section. They're talking abotu a relevant topic, not the article.