[M1573RMU74710N]

> Suppose the buyer of a bass boat dies while it is stored in a rented garage. No crime has been committed, but it will take a court order and a deputy with a bolt cutter for the repo man to get his hands on it

Sure, but again in that case isn't there a record of the person dying, the storage rental agreement, a will or lien or something saying "The boat is now property of X?".

What I'm getting at is in the case of theft, there's no evidence that the property wasn't just given to the other person. How do you make a complaint to the court without that? If I can do that, I'd like to try next time someone steals something, which unfortunately happens regularly in the town I live.

I'm not a lawyer, but as a musician I've had some experience with getting stolen property back, and my experiences always involved filing a police report for the stolen stuff, and then it's recovered as part of the investigation of that. I mean, for example when my friend's guitar turned up in a pawn shop, he went to the police...told him about how his guitar was stolen and they looked up the report, etc...then the police in charge of that went to the pawn shop and got his guitar back. When my friend's bike was stolen, he got it back when the police arrested the person who stole it (he was caught shortly after stealing another bike).