I'm not sure what you mean by your last sentence. I'd say that if code is being used in production it's not yet "dead", and it should be a much higher priority

I'm not sure what you mean by your last sentence. I'd say that if code is being used in production it's not yet "dead", and it should be a much higher priority for team members to work with it. Can you not add additional tests? Refactor out even a single feature at a time into more modern tech?