A missing person is a person who has disappeared, and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and fate is not believed known. Laws related to missing persons are often complex, since in many jurisdictions, relatives and third parties may not deal with a person's assets until their death is considered proven by law, and a formal death certificate issued. The situation, uncertainties, and lack of closure or funeral resulting when a person goes missing, may be extremely painful and long-lasting for family and friends.
A person may be missing due to their own decision, accident, crime, death in a location that they cannot be found (such as at sea), or many other reasons. In some countries missing persons' photographs are posted on bulletin boards, milk cartons, postcards, and websites, to publicize their description.
Read more about Missing Person: Reasons, Legal Aspects, Monument
Famous quotes containing the words missing person, missing and/or person:
“statistic: the us bureau of missing persons reports
that in 1968 over 100,000 people disappeared
leaving no solid clues
nor traceonly
a space
in the lives of their friends.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“What is Americanism? Every one has a different answer. Some people say it is never to submit to the dictation of a King. Others say Americanism is the pride of liberty and the defence of an insult to the flag with their gore. When some half-developed person tramples on that flag, we should be ready to pour out the blood of the nation, they say. But do we not sit in silence when that flag waves over living conditions which should be an insult to all patriotism?”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)