Hello~, and I'm sorry for what happened and the problems it has caused.
In truth, the claiming system has been like that for years - even the immediately prior servers Red and Blue, had the same requirements though they had slightly more lax timing (90 days - still would have been hit by your 100 day absence though). This rule is in place for a few reasons, not least of which being players that leave for that length of time are unlikely to return at all.
In addition, players tend to claim immediately around RTP points that everyone will be going through in their day to day play, and those claims can certainly build up and make the server seem far more full than it really is.
In the future, if you return, please keep in mind that it only takes 15 or 20 minutes every month or two in order to refresh your claims. Pop on, say hi, do a little light farming, etc and you'll be good for another 75 days.
If you are unable to do that, you are free to contact a player you trust to hold onto your claim for you in your absence, and the staff team have historically been willing to make the transfer in the event you are unable to get on at all. Some staff (me included) are known to hold onto player claims on request as well.
And staff are on essentially daily, regardless of what is going on in our lives. Our claims can't expire even if we wanted them to, we simply don't even give them a week, let alone a month, let alone 75 days.
I apologize again for the issues, though the rule is fair. 75 days is far more than enough time to determine how to handle the time limit, and the time limit has been enforced for quite some time, including on previous servers. That's one of the reasons we don't allow "sudden life things" to get in the way of the time frame.
We can't judge what is reasonable (because to the player it apparently was, and real life comes before a game), but also because it is very few real life incidents that would take the full 75 days to resolve, with absolutely no access to Minecraft or Discord to open a ticket prior to the claims being removed.
We're easy to work with, but we have to know about it to work with it.