A death certificate is either a legal document issued by a
medical practitioner
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through t ...
which states when a person died, or a document issued by a government
civil registration
Civil registration is the system by which a government records the vital events ( births, marriages, and deaths) of its citizens and residents. The resulting repository or database has different names in different countries and even in differ ...
office, that declares the date, location and
cause of a person's death, as entered in an official register of deaths.
An official death certificate is usually required to be provided when applying for
probate
Probate is the judicial process whereby a will is "proved" in a court of law and accepted as a valid public document that is the true last testament of the deceased, or whereby the estate is settled according to the laws of intestacy in the st ...
or
administration of a deceased estate. They are also sought for genealogical research. The government registration office would usually be required to provide details of deaths, without production of a death certificate, to enable government agencies to update their records, such as electoral registers, government benefits paid, passport records, transfer the inheritance, etc.
Nature of a certificate
Before issuing a death certificate, the authorities usually require a certificate from a
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
or
coroner
A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into the manner or cause of death, and to investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within the coroner's jur ...
to validate the
cause of death and the identity of the deceased. In cases where it is not completely clear that a person is dead (usually because their body is being sustained by
life support
Life support comprises the treatments and techniques performed in an emergency in order to support life after the failure of one or more vital organs. Healthcare providers and emergency medical technicians are generally certified to perform basic ...
), a
neurologist is often called in to verify
brain death
Brain death is the permanent, irreversible, and complete loss of brain function which may include cessation of involuntary activity necessary to sustain life. It differs from persistent vegetative state, in which the person is alive and some aut ...
and to fill out the appropriate documentation. The failure of a physician to immediately submit the required form to the government (to trigger issuance of the death certificate) is often both a
crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in C ...
and cause for loss of one's license to practice. This is because of past cases in which dead people continued to receive public benefits or vote in elections.
A full explanation of the cause of death includes any other diseases and disorders the person had at the time of death, even though they did not directly cause the death.
United States
In most of the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, death certificates are considered public domain documents and can therefore be obtained for any individual regardless of the requester's relationship to the deceased. Other jurisdictions restrict to whom death certificates are issued. For example, in the State of New York, only close relatives can obtain a death certificate, including the spouse, parent, child or sibling of the deceased, and other persons who have a documented lawful right or claim, documented medical need, or New York State court order.
History
Historically, in Europe and North America, death records were kept by the local churches, along with baptism and marriage records. In 1639, in what would become the United States, the
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as th ...
was the first to have the secular courts keep these records. By the end of the 19th century, European countries were adopting centralized systems for recording deaths.
In the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, a standard model death certificate was developed around 1910.
Specific jurisdictions
England and Wales
When someone dies in England and Wales, a doctor involved in their care completes a "medical certificate of cause of death" (MCCD). This is then forwarded to the register office to register the person's death. The
General Register Office, which is a section of
HM Passport Office
His Majesty's Passport Office (HMPO) is an agency of the Home Office in the United Kingdom. It provides passports for British nationals worldwide and was formed on 1 April 2006 as the Identity and Passport Service before being renamed HM Passpo ...
, is responsible for civil registration services in England and Wales.
Scotland
National registration began in 1855; registrations are rather more detailed.
Stillbirths
United States
A 2007 article in ''
People
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
'' magazine revealed that in the case of a
stillbirth
Stillbirth is typically defined as fetal death at or after 20 or 28 weeks of pregnancy, depending on the source. It results in a baby born without signs of life. A stillbirth can result in the feeling of guilt or grief in the mother. The term ...
it is not standard practice to issue both a
birth certificate
A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the birth of a person. The term "birth certificate" can refer to either the original document certifying the circumstances of the birth or to a certified copy of or representation of the ensui ...
and a death certificate. Most states instead issue a "certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth".
See also
*
Birth certificate
A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the birth of a person. The term "birth certificate" can refer to either the original document certifying the circumstances of the birth or to a certified copy of or representation of the ensui ...
*
Ghosting (identity theft)
*
Marriage certificate
A marriage certificate (sometimes: marriage lines) is an official statement that two people are married. In most jurisdictions, a marriage certificate is issued by a government official only after the civil registration of the marriage.
In so ...
*
Marriage licence
*
Mortality Medical Data System (MMDS)
References
External links
Mortality Datafrom the U.S. National Vital Statistics System - See Methods - Data collection - for copies of death certificates and how to fill them.
*Magrane BP, Gilliland MGF, and King DE. Certification of Death by Family Physicians. American Family Physician 1997 Oct 1;56(5):1433-8.
*Swain GR, Ward GK, Hartlaub PP. Death certificates: Let's get it right. American Family Physician February 15, 2005
Find Free Death Recordsgives details on how to apply for death records in each state.
Online Death Indexes and Recordslists some online death certificate indexes
from the National Center for Health Statistics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Death Certificate
Identity documents
Funeral-related industry
Vital statistics (government records)
Legal aspects of death