Legalised vampires

[ffutures]

My last few BtVS / CSI crossover stories have set up a world which knows about the supernatural, slayers, etc. and in which vampires have some minimal "human" rights in some US states - no staking without due cause (or a moderately good excuse) but you have to avoid human blood and have a tracer chip inside your body. While I haven't said this explicitly, I think that Willow has a hand in designing the chips, and that they transmit a magical warning (or even release a few CC of holy water) if a vamp falls off the wagon. Whether or not this is legal is open to debate...

OK, what about property rights? What happens to the things you own when you become a vampire? Legally you're dead, and lawyers will not get around that one easily. What about bank accounts, investments, etc.; can you leave things to yourself, and what happens to your debts etc.? Could you set up a trust fund, while alive, to give you money once you're dead. Why would you want to?

Another question; could you give evidence about things that happened when you were alive, and would it be legally acceptable?

And yes, I am vaguely thinking about another story - but I really don't want to rip off the Anita Blake universe, so I'm assuming that most of the problems are still being tested by the courts and that current US law mostly decides things.

All suggestions gratefully received.

Comments

[vitruvian23.livejournal.com]

Even with the big reveal of Not Fade Away, I don't think things will go as cleanly according to the principle of the matter (vampire is really a demon in your body, ergo another person) as many are suggesting.

As shown in Mr. Rowland's stories, the arrangement in Las Vegas has been rather quiet and pragmatic - measures against violence, but no attempt to make vamps stop using credit cards, bank accounts, etc. they got as humans. Even if everybody now knows vamps exist, the official Watcher mythology on them (which has always had a bit of a whiff of convenience about it, anyway) may take some time to disseminate, and may *never* become the basis for acting law.

I think a lot is going to depend on what happened during a vamp's turning.

1) If someone got bled and fed, then their corpse was found and they were given a proper burial before rising from the grave, there's likely to be a death certificate, an estate process, and a great deal of difficulty in popping up claiming that they're alive again and all their estate should come back to them for their vampy uses - unless they show up *real* soon and are rational enough to claim they were just cataleptic or something. However, they may not face too much difficulty with continuing to use their original identity and IDs/ID numbers for credit offers, bank accounts, etc., given that it takes a while for notification of a death to spread through the financial system.

2) If someone is turned so quickly that their body is not found before rising, or their body is indeed sheltered by the sire, they should face no difficulty in continuing as their original selves, just changed. It would take quite some for the legal system to adjust/adopt the Watcher mythology so that being a vamp was taken as ipso facto evidence that a death had occurred and the person before you was a counterfeit.

3) The route of willing stuff to yourself seems like it would usually be too convoluted, unless and until the route of claiming to be your host becomes completely blocked.

Any way this shakes out, I'm sure one of the remaining branch offices of Wolfram & Hart will be happy to help you set up your 'estate' planning, assuming of course there's enough money involved to make it worthwhile, for a nominal fee of no more than 90% of your earnings for the rest of your unlife.

As for giving evidence in a court of law, vampires do seem to retain all the memories of their hosts, so I can't really see an argument that their testimony would be in the nature of hearsay really winning - even if it did, a direct transfer of memory at death might well qualify as death-bed testimony.

Also, on your stories, I forget if the PDs are trying to enforce a *complete* ban on human blood, or if vamps are getting away with willing (paid?) donors or semi-legal diversions from blood banks. I can see reasons for going either way...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - some very useful ideas there.

The blood thing was originally that they were using tracer chips to track vamps and would know if they'd been near any attack. The human blood thing is what I'd guess Willow might add if she was asked to improve the system - agree that it's possibly overkill in the light of willing donors etc., but that's Willow for you.