Can a TCP connection between two local processes be closed without either process being involved?

I have two processes written in two different programming languages that exchange information via a local TCP connection. One process is starting the other but their lifetime must be shared, i.e. if one dies, so does the other and vice versa.

I would like to use the TCP connection as the mechanism to detect if the other side is crashing, but I'm not sure if it's safe. I wonder if there are cases where the connection could be closed for other reasons than one of process crashing or exiting.

Edit:

Ideally, the system needs to be portable across OS which is why TCP connections are used instead of Unix domain socket.
I know that it's possible to use administrative tools to kill the connection. What I want to know is if there are cases where in normal circumstances (both processes running fine) the connection would be close.

Solution

If the computers that are serving your processes are distant, then of course network problems along the way may cause problems, otherwise it's not trivial to close a connection. A tool such as "tcpkill" can close connections that originates or terminates on the local computer, and if you cross a firewall, then of course the firewall admin may close connections going through.

I think your scheme would work fairly well; if something causes the network connection to go down, then both your processes will terminate, so your worst case scenario would be excessive downtime - which I wouldn't expect from a connection through a normal network.

tcpkill: https://linux.die.net/man/8/tcpkill