Is it possible when the Dr. said GF was alive at the hospital it was more of a formal declaration since in many states a person must be declared dead by a medical doctor.
According to Wiki:
"Most legal determinations of death in the developed world are made by medical professionals who pronounce death when specific criteria are met.
[4] Two categories of legal death are death determined by irreversible cessation of heartbeat (cardiopulmonary death), and death determined by irreversible cessation of functions of the brain (
brain death).[
citation needed][
dubious – discuss] In the
United States, each state has laws for determining these two categories of death that are modeled after the
Uniform Determination of Death Act. States that do not recognize "irreversible cessation of all function of the entire brain, including the brainstem" to be death include Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas.
[5][1]
Cardiopulmonary criteria for death are met when a physician determines that efforts to restart a stopped heart during
cardiac arrest are futile, or that no attempt should be made to restart a stopped heart, such as when there is a
Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order. In the latter case, irreversible is understood to mean that heartbeat and breathing cannot return on their own and will not be restored by medical intervention.
[6][7]