Aid for DANA | What can the families of the missing do and request?

Jose Monteropresident of the Montero de Cisneros Law Firm, spoke to Informativos Telecinco to explain, after the terrible tragedy caused by DANA, what family members can do with people who still remain missing to protect the rights of both the absentee and their own regarding the aid established after the disaster to face the crisis.

With 78 people still missing and the emergency services deployed in the area working tirelessly in search and rescue efforts, there are also many doubts that arise and continue in the midst of the drama.

To resolve them, and answering the question of what the relatives of these missing people can do to protect the rights of the absenthis interests, his properties, his money, as well as his own, José Montero explains:

“First of all, we must bear in mind that there is a declaration of absence and death to missing. Normally, when a person disappears and before they are considered dead, a series of years have to pass, up to 10 years, and in this case, since it is an emergency of this type, after three months a declaration of absence or absence could be requested. of death in the court of first instance where they were last seen or where they resided,” he explains.

“This is nothing more than making an instance between the court of first instanceneither a lawyer nor a solicitor is needed. Simply, the family member who is looking for the missing person must apply to the court to be given the certificate of absence or death in order to process all the aid and be able to access the benefits. inheritancesfor example,” he details, before delving into it.

“Let’s take the example where a person has died, his father, there it is clear that the inheritance can be opened and all the papers processed. But the missing person is not known if he is alive or dead, so the legal system Spanish has this mechanism of legal fiction where we are going to consider the person dead, even if they do not appearand so their descendants can continue processing all the papers, they can be processing and not be left out of aid, for example.”

Asked in this sense about who is the person who has the power to carry out these procedures, José Montero specifies: “Normally family members. Children, descendants, ascendants and spouses until fourth grade. That is, the living spouse, the wife, the husband, the parents, the children; the closest environment. They would basically be the same ones who are looking for their missing loved ones: children looking for their parents, parents looking for their children, husbands or wives looking for their spouses…”