Civil registry

In many, vital events (eg. s, s, and s) are required by law to be formally recorded in registers maintained by government officials.

United Kingdom
In the, mandatory civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths was first introduced in for. Subsequent legislation introduced similar systems in (all of which was then part of the United Kingdom), and.

The administration of individual s is the responsibility of registrars in the relevant. There is also a national body for each. The local offices are generally responsible both for maintaining the original registers and for providing copies to the national body for central retention. A superintendent registrar facilitates the legal preliminaries to marriage, conducts civil marriage ceremonies and retains in his/her custody all completed birth, death and marriage registers for the district. The office of the superintendent registrar is the district, often referred to (wrongly) in the media as the "Registry office".

Today, both officers may also conduct statutory civil partnership preliminaries and ceremonies, citizenship ceremonies and other non statutory ceremonies such as naming or renewal of vows. Certified copies of the entries made by the registrars over the years are issued on a daily basis either for genealogical research or for modern legal purposes such as supporting passport applications or ensuring eligibility for the appropriate junior sports leagues.

England and Wales
Births in must be registered within 42 days, whilst deaths must be registered within 5 days unless an inquest is called or a post mortem is held.

Marriages are registered at the time of the ceremony by either the officiating or an authorised person or registrar.

The official registers are not directly accessible by the general public. Instead, indexes are made available which can be used to find the relevant register entry and then request a certified copy of the details.

The &mdash;now merged into the &mdash; has overall responsibility for registration administration.

Scotland
Civil registration came into force in on,. A significant difference from the English system is the greater detail required for a registration. This means that if a certified copy of an entry is requested, it will contain much more information.

The has overall responsibility for registration administration and drafting legislative changes in this area (as well as census data). They are governed by the and subsequent legislation (responsibility for which has now been devolved to the ).

United States
In the United States, such as, , and  are maintained by the Office of Vital Statistics or Office of Vital Records in each individual state. Other documents such as, documents,  documents, and  are maintained by the  of each individual county.

United States

 * Where to Write for U.S. Vital Records

United Kingdom

 * General Register Office (England and Wales)
 * General Register Office for Scotland
 * General Register Office Northern Ireland

Republic of Ireland

 * General Register Office