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

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

You might want to look at the Sookie Stackhouse vampire mysteries, by Charlaine Harris. They're set in just that sort of milieu, with vampires just out of, err, the coffin...

[paratti.livejournal.com]

If vampires in the verse have some legal rights, they must be legally defined as vampries, which would imply some sort of differentially alive status which could be extended to property and financial ownership laws as well as presumably marriage. In light of that, I'd assume no change in bank accounts, marital status, inheritance triggering until someone was totally dead/dust.

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

Ian McDonald's excellent Necroville would be relevant here. It's about nanotechnologically revived dead rather than vampires, but their legal status is central to the story.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

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?

If you're gonna be consistent with the Jossverse point of view (and the scripts got a little inconsistent on this occasionally), there is no "you" involved! A vampire is a petty demon inhabiting your former body, with most or all of your memories (which explains why vamps are sometimes parodies or mockeries of the former inhabitants of the corpses involved). If you are stupid enough to want to be taken over by a vampire, presumably you could leave property to that creature in your corpse, subject to local statutes, if the courts decide that vamps are "persons" within the law. Debts, on the other hand, would attach to the estate of the decedent as before. And even if the courts decide that vamps are "persons" within the law, the testimony of a vamp as to the knowledge of his predecessor would be hearsay, IMHO.

(I never got the impression that any of this was official in your BtVS/CSI stories; I thought it was very much empirical and sub rosa?)

[jgracio.livejournal.com]

Gotta go with vampire you being a different being under the law. And probably not one the law would recognize as being trustworthy.

So, you get vamped and whatever you used to have is gone, unless you leave Vamp!You things in your will.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The last story was set in New York a while after the major demon invasion of Not Fade Away, which gave the game away - I assumed that the Nevada scheme of the earlier stories (no official status for vampires etc., except that they're fitted with tracking gizmos, but no staking if they behave) has become the model for some of the USA but not all, and that it is still mostly a guideline for public agencies, not tested law.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Forgot to say thanks on the evidence thing - that was more or less the idea I had, that it wouldn't be admissible, it's nice that others agree.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

About what I was thinking.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking more "accepted practice" than legal rights, and should have said so - it's what the police do, not what the law says they have to do.

[xxmagex.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it, I would have to go (Mind you its been several years sinc eI've done estate law) with the vampire you being a separate creature and he/she/it may not be eligible for proprty inheritance as it played a role in your death.

Gut instinct, vampires ala without soul, would not be considered as equals to people, if they had souls, equal of people (great I just stopped myself from staking Spike :( ) Demons equal of people

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

This got way too long for a comment: check out my LJ if you're interested.

[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.

[soren-nyrond.livejournal.com]

*Assuming* that Wolf, Ram & Hart are *somewhere* in the 'verse, I suspect/suggest that they are probably (one of) the leading undead-rights advocates. I also hypothesise that the Catholic Church (and Karl Kolchak) have probably got lawyers on stand-by to lobby contrary-wise.

It probably (as others have said) runs on a case-by-case basis :: how firm is the proof of death ? Is this an arguable case of identity-theft (by the individual who died) ? And, most importantly, how rich is the applicant (or how undead is the judge) taking the decision ?
(See the CSI argument over whether a judge can prevent a CSI investigating him within his own jurisdiction)

[dsample.livejournal.com]

The vampires would probably all have their lawyers arguing that they're the same person. Same finger prints, DNA, etc. They have the full memories of their pasts, and so on.

Their heirs would all have their lawyers arguing that the vampire is a different person.

If vamps are different people, it brings up a novel way of "declaring bankruptcy" A soulless businessman finds himself way over his head in dept, so he squirrels away some hard assets in places where his debtors won't be able to find them, and gets himself vamped. He's dead, all debts get settled from his estate, and businessman goes on, just like before, only now he's literally soulless, instead of just figuratively.

For the testifying thing, since the vamp has all their memories intact, they should be able to testify about events that happened before they were vamped. Such testimony should carry as much weight as a vamps testimony about events that took place after they were vamped.

If a vamp *is* the same person, is a 200 year old vamp owed 70 years of back-payments from Social Security?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

One of the points you've made is going to be important in the story if I write it - won't say which...