If she wants to get married again, she will have to either divorce her spouse or have him declared legally dead. Most women choose the former because it is less time consuming and less expensive. Obtaining a divorce under these circumstances can present severe financial problems, though, especially if the wife was figuring to saddle her ex-husband with the tab. Lawyers understand this situation and are prone to requesting fees up-front.
If the wife wants to collect on her husband's life insurance policy, she will have to get him declared legally dead. The procedures for getting such a declaration vary greatly from state to state and the whole process can be blocked by a particularly malicious husband. I know of one case where a husband penned a note on the datelined front page of a newspaper, then mailed the note to his life insurance company. Needless to say, the insurance company refused to pay off on the substantial policy.
Dual Identities & Lovers
I once met a cheerful bigamist at the Operating Engineers hiring hall in San Mateo, California. This enterprising fellow had two wives, two families and two identities and divided his time evenly between them. He worked on construction jobs during the summer and repaired ski lifts during the winter. When the snow was thick on the ground he was drawing tax-free unemployment based on his previous summer's work, and during the hot months he drew benefits based on his winter job. Both his wives had jobs paying above-the-norm salaries, so the dual-family set-up was not a drain on him financially.
This information was elicited in the course of a casual conversation, but when I began asking specific and probing questions such as, "How did you work yourself into this situation in the first place?" and "Do your wives know each other?" I overstepped the boundaries of his privacy and he clammed up, turned on his heels and left. I've wondered for years whether he will carry these arrangements into retirement and reap Social Security benefits from both identities...
Contrary to widely-held opinion, the "other woman" is seldom a serious factor in most decisions to effect a deliberate disappearance, and it is rare for a man to disappear and take his "sidelines lover" with him. This is probably due to the practical reason that engineering the disappearance of two people is vastly more complicated than one. One of the basic attributes of a person willing and able to disappear and create a new identity is rock-ribbed practicality.
Boredom & Frustration
There is something about the middle years of life, the forties to fifties, that makes a man take a long, hard look at himself, his works, and his future. For then it is that he comes face-to-face with the ashes of his dreams and realizes that he is most definitely not going to write the Great American Novel. Or become President of The Company. Or even A MultiMillionaire.
The great majority of men pass through this stage by simply gritting their teeth and continuing right on schlepping. A very, very few become so depressed they commit suicide. A larger number, also profoundly discouraged, commit the "revocable suicide" and disappear with the thought that they will leave their troubles behind. Sometimes it works.
The "social scientists" call this the "Gauguin Syndrome" after the French stockbroker who chucked it all to paint and contract syphilis in the South Sea Islands. In the interests of accuracy, Gauguin did not change his identity--only his lifestyle and goals. He was really a run-of-the-mill dropout, not a disappearee.
One slow evening in the bar at the Old Shasta Royal Lodge above Dunsmuir, California, I was idling away the time in casual conversation with a traveler who had taken a room for the night. My companion, a well-turned-out man of about fifty, became avidly interested when I mentioned I was researching a book about the techniques of disappearances. When the conversation came around to the reasons for disappearing, he said musingly, "You know, the situation that a very near friend of mine found himself in may be of interest to you."
Naturally I made all the appropriate noises and he continued with his story.
"My friend was married to a small-town New England girl. Together they had raised three fine children. He worked as a teacher for a small school system on the Cape, which was fine enough when he started. After seven years he established tenure, but the pay was barely enough to make ends meet. He noticed that more and more he had a feeling of being trapped; he was bored and dissatisfied with his job, but with four mouths to feed he didn't dare give up his tenured position for a job at some other school, and other high-paying jobs are hard to come by in resort areas like the Cape.
"He and his wife began to squabble about their finances. As the kids got older the debts started to pile up. In order to pay the bills and keep peace in the family, he took a summer job as a pump jockey at a nearby gas station. Can you imagine the humiliation of a forty-year-old man pumping gas, or the anger that grew inside him every time a neighbor or colleague pulled in for a fill-up? It became unbearable."
He paused, realizing that his emotion recounting these events was giving away the true identity of his "friend." I could see he was debating whether to continue so I prompted him to get to the heart of the story.
"It doesn't sound to me like your friend could last very long in a situation like that," I said, reestablishing the pretense of the "friend."
"You're right about that. A man will sacrifice a lot for his family, but when he gives up his pride and dignity he becomes something less than a
