How Arizona Determines Death and Legal Status for Estate Purposes

In addition to the rules of evidence in courts of general jurisdiction, the following rules relating to a determination of death and status apply: 1. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards. 2. A certified or authenticated copy of a death certificate purporting to be issued by an official or agency of the place where the death purportedly occurred is prima facie evidence of the fact, place, date and time of death and the identity of the decedent. 3. A certified or authenticated copy of any record or report of a governmental agency, domestic or foreign, that a person is missing, detained, dead or alive is prima facie evidence of the status and of the dates, circumstances and places disclosed by the record or report. 4. In the absence of prima facie evidence of death under paragraph 2 or 3, the fact of death may be established by clear and convincing evidence, including circumstantial evidence. 5. A person whose death is not established under paragraphs 1 through 4, who is absent for a continuous period of five years, during which time that person has not been heard from, and whose absence is not satisfactorily explained after diligent search or inquiry is presumed to be dead. That person's death is presumed to have occurred at the end of the period unless there is sufficient evidence for determining that death occurred earlier. 6. In the absence of evidence disputing the time of death stated on a document described in paragraph 2 or 3, a document described in paragraph 2 or 3 that states a time of death one hundred twenty hours or more after the time of death of another person, however the time of death of the other person is determined, establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the person survived the other person by one hundred twenty hours.