BUCHAREST, Romania — A Romanian court has rejected a man’s claim that he is alive after his wife officially registered him as dead, saying that the decision cannot be reversed.

A spokeswoman for the court told local news outlets on Friday that the man, Constantin Reliu, 63, lost his case in the northeast city of Vasului because he had appealed too late.

The ruling is final.

Local news reports on the case said that Mr. Reliu had lost contact with his wife and family when he traveled to Turkey in 1992 for work.

Hearing no news from her husband for years, his wife got a death certificate for him in 2016.

The authorities in Turkey found Mr. Reliu this year with expired papers and deported him. But when he arrived in Romania, he discovered he had been declared dead.