Elderly parents in Nantou County whose daughter has been missing for more than three decades received a court-issued legal declaration of “presumption of death” regarding their daughter last week.
It had been a difficult journey for the parents, surnamed Chien (簡), from Nantou’s Tsaotun Township (草屯), whose teenage daughter went missing 35 years ago, but the time had come to seek closure, as their son applied for the court’s legal declaration of presumed death regarding her case.
The search to find their missing daughter for more than three decades far exceeded the seven-year “presumption of death” court order for missing persons under Article 8 of Taiwan’s Civil Code (民法): “An absent (missing) person who has disappeared for more than seven years may be declared dead by the court upon the application of any interested person or the public prosecutor.”
Photo: Taipei Times, file photo
It happened one day, 35 years ago, when the Chiens’ daughter, aged 15, did not return home from junior high school in Nantou City. Her classmates said they heard she was heading to the nearby Bishanyan Buddhist Temple (碧山巖佛寺), but she was never seen again.
Over the next few months, her father searched for her along with local police, looking for evidence that could lead to her whereabouts.
Chien left his job to devote himself full-time to searching for his daughter, together with his wife. The couple drove a pick-up truck across Taiwan for two years, without giving up hope of finding their daughter.
After more than three decades of these efforts, an opportunity arose when the National Police Agency ordered that all police precincts take DNA samples from all unidentified corpses within their jurisdiction to build up a nationwide DNA database, which was undertaken in 2022.
Chien provided a DNA sample, but they did not find a match.
After 35 years, Chien’s son applied for a legal declaration of his sister’s death.
Court investigators had to search their records, but had no record of her, such as being registered for labor insurance or national health insurance.
The Nantou District Court granted the “legally dead” declaration for Chien’s daughter, as she had exceeded the Civil Code’s defined period of disappearance of more than seven years.
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