Genealogy Chat

When you registered a death do you have to take the birth or marriage certificate along, as proof of that person sandra

I registered my mothers death 2 years ago and only had to take the medical death certificate from the hospital where she died. Kath. x

THANKYOU

It certainly wasn't necessary in 1990 to produce a birth certificate when registering a death.(I know you specially mentioned the 80s though) All you needed was a signed proof of death by the doctor who witnessed it and then you took that to the registrar who made out the official certificate. Aileen

Hi Sandra My Father died in 1987 & I only needed the doctors certificate to register his death. Vivienne

If my uncle had taken my grandfather's birth cert along when he registered the death, then both his date and place of birth would have been correct! Bear in mind that the person informing the death may not know about where birth and death certs are and when you register a death, you want to do it asap, and not spend ages looking through family papers for documents that may not be there. This is why so many death certs contain errors. No doubt in the future when you register a death the registrar will be able to bring up earlier certs online. In fact I think the new proposals are that you will be able to register some events by phone or online. nell