Nominal tense is a cross-linguistically rare and understudied phenomenon, with past vs nonpast being the minimal distinction. In this study, we investigate for the first time the online processing of lifetime effects (i.e. implicatures about whether an individual is dead or alive) in sentences with past nominal tense and kinship terms following contextual information about this individual's lifetime status (dead or alive). An end-of-sentence acceptability judgment task completes the study. Evidence comes from 25 speakers of Pomak (Slavic, Greece) who use a realis past suffix to form, among others, definite articles, contrasting with a generic suffix for future, habitual, and irrealis. Our results suggest that past nominal tense with kinship terms triggers a lifetime effect which is apparent during online processing. The present study therefore offers support to previous reports of lifetime effects in other languages with nominal tense, highlighting another similarity between nominal and verbal tense.