§ 133.001.Seven-Year Absence

The common law presumption, stated in a single sentence.

Any person absenting himself for seven successive years shall be presumed dead unless it is proved that the person was alive within the seven-year period.

Seven years is the traditional period, inherited from English law and adopted across the common law world. The number has no particular logic beyond long usage.

The presumption is rebuttable, and the section names what rebuts it: proof the person was alive within the seven-year period. Any contact, sighting, or record within the period restarts the clock.

"Successive" does real work. The seven years must be continuous, so an absence interrupted by a return begins again.

The provision is needed because a great deal turns on death and nothing else establishes it. An estate cannot be administered, a beneficiary cannot claim, property cannot pass, and a marriage cannot be resolved while the question is open.

Note what the section does not fix: the date of death. It presumes the fact after seven years but says nothing about when within that period death occurred — which matters for survivorship, for limitations, and for the order of deaths among family members.

The two sections that follow deal with an armed services certificate, which does fix a date, and with restoring the estate if the presumption turns out to be wrong.