I think it should be separate because it can be a major plot point. If somebody is Back from the Dead, they may not be able to access any of their stuff because they were declared dead.
Fight smart, not fair.Agreed that they need to stay separate. Legally Dead is one trope. It may or may not lead to a second trope, Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated. Merging them means that we have nowhere to put examples of people being declared "legally dead" that don't progress to "Reports of my death..."
I agree that it's possible to have Legally Dead but not Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated. I just don't think it's interesting enough. Someone is Killed Off for Real and a death certificate is issued. It strikes me as People Sit On Chairs.
You don't need to be Killed Off for Real to be Legally Dead. There are other reasons that it can happen. Sometimes it's done on purpose and then the character gets a new identity to hide out in, and you don't need to be Legally Dead to have Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated.
edited 27th Oct '10 9:07:11 AM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickKeep them separate. Legally Dead is the result of a legal process. The other may result from gossip, conjecture, sleight of hand, apparent disappearance, any number of things and has a different set of implications.
And Legally Dead has been used to drive entire plots — Martin Guerre, for example, requires Legally Dead, but leaves the question of is The Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated true or not.
edited 27th Oct '10 9:43:05 AM by Madrugada
Ok, I think you've convinced me that these could be separate tropes. However, I think that the boundary needs to be made clearer: currently Legally Dead lists examples which involve presumed death whether legally dead or not (Bilbo Baggins in the Hobbit is presumed dead but we don't know of any Shire legal system for him to be legally dead); and ROMDWGE lists examples of *any* premature death report, of which Legally Dead would automatically be one (such as Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers).
Basically, my main gripe is that — in spite of the conceptual differences highlighted above — almost all of the examples of Legally Dead could be cut and pasted into ROMDWGE because they fit that just as well. (The exceptions: Zero Punctuation and [[Hackers]]). The tropes might be conceptually different, but in practice Legally Dead almost always implied ROMDWGE.
Well it seems I'm not convincing anybody. I know when I'm in the minority; this thread can be locked.
Also, apparently I should remove the repair shop tag from Legally Dead, but it doesn't seem to be in the source. How do I do it?
edited 29th Oct '10 2:31:25 PM by rhebus
Part of the problem is that the description of ROMDWGE is a lot more specific than the examples — the description boils down to "Faking the Dead Gone Horribly Right", but a lot of the examples are situations where the "death" is unintentional, or where the character was actually dead but then resurrected.
132 is the rudest number.Ah, I got confused because How To Fix A Trope
includes the step "Remove the Repair Shop Tag".
Go to the thread and click the "holler to a mod" button and ask them to correct it.
Fight smart, not fair.

Legally Dead was launched recently. Although it didn't arise in the YKTTW discussion, Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated is very similar, and shares many of the same examples.
Legally Dead is simply a character who is declared legally dead; Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated is a Legally Dead character who is Not Quite Dead. But the alternative — Legally Dead and Dead for Real — just isn't terribly interesting. Any example interesting enough to go on Legally Dead could also apply to Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated and vice versa. Therefore, I think they should be merged (into Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated, since it is the older trope).