Proposals for a new legislation could enable relatives of missing people to receive life insurance payments, it has been revealed.

Currently, relatives of someone who has gone missing cannot claim on the missing person’s life insurance, move home or remortgage (if the property is in joint names) unless the person has been missing for at least seven years.

Yet if proposals go ahead, relatives will be entitled to apply to the high court to declare that someone is missing and presumed dead before the end of the seven years.

According to The Guardian, the move would be offering “a lifeline to the living.”

Mum, Vicky Derrick, was left with a joint mortgage to reimburse and the responsibility of a young child when she was 24 after her husband had disappeared six years ago.

Derrick, now 30, said: "It was traumatic enough that my husband was missing but suddenly I was a single mother at 24 and I had to find a way to pay the mortgage and the bills.

The bane of my life has always been the mortgage – it's still in joint names – so I can't change it or move house. We also took out a life insurance policy in case anything bad happened, which I haven't been able to cash in.”

Geoff Newiss, Missing People's director of policy and research, said: "The bill will have an enormous impact on a large number of people. At the moment, it's a confusing, complicated and costly process to get through the legal processes needed to manage someone's estate. The bill will simplify the process by creating a one stop shop for those families that are ready to have their loved one declared dead."