What happens when the law declares you dead — and then, years later, changes its mind?
It sounds like the plot of a mystery novel, but for one Quebec family it became a very real legal nightmare, raising unsettling questions about life, death and the limits of legal fiction.
That’s exactly what happened to Deborah Carol Riddle, a resident of Brossard, Que. In 2006, her husband, Hooshang Imanpoorsaid, purchased a $500,000 life insurance policy from Ivari.
Two years later, he left his home, telling his family he had to go to Toronto on a business trip. They never saw him again.
In 2016, after eight years of silence, Riddle turned to the courts. Under the Quebec Civil Code, a person missing for more than seven years can be declared dead. With no evidence to the contrary, the court issued a declaration that he was dead.
This does not mean that he was actually dead. Justice Geeta Narang later described the declaration as a legal fiction designed to help families move forward when a loved one has vanished without a trace.
“Whether the person is actually dead or alive” she wrote, “is not the issue.”
For Riddle, the declaration should have unlocked the insurance proceeds and allowed her to settle her affairs.
But the story didn’t end there.
The insurer refused to pay. It went back to court with evidence that turned the case upside down.
Ivari provided proof to the court that Imanpoorsaid was very much alive: an Iranian identity card in his name, documentation of 16 airline flights including three taken after he had been declared dead in Quebec, and proof that he had registered for welfare benefits in Iran in 2018.
Faced with that evidence, the Quebec Superior Court had little difficulty annulling the earlier declaration of death.
In legal terms, Imanpoorsaid had been resurrected.
The reversal carries consequences that are as strange as they are significant. Quebec law anticipates the possibility of a return from the dead and sets out what happens next.
When an absentee returns from what the court called the “land of the dead” after a declaration of death has been pronounced, the marriage remains dissolved, despite the spouse being alive.
Property already distributed stays with the recipients. The returnee may attempt to recover property still in existence but may face problems if others are still in possession of it.
Under these circumstances, a person can be legally alive for some purposes and dead for other purposes.
The returnee recovers their property in its existing condition. However, an apparent heir can retain possession of the property and its income until the returnee reclaims the property.
Riddle appealed the annulment to the Supreme Court of Canada but the outcome did not change. Last month it upheld the annulment. The evidence, it found, clearly established that Imanpoorsaid was still alive.
In the end, Riddle will not get the insurance proceeds, and has to pay court costs in the Quebec appeal and at the Supreme Court of Canada.
The case raises a deeper, almost philosophical question — how can the law reconcile a man who is alive for one purpose but effectively dead for others?
In the uneasy space between legal fiction and lived reality, the answer is far from clear. As this case shows, sometimes the law is left trying to catch up with the truth.