Death certificate


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A death certificate is a document issued by a government official such as a of  that declares the date, location and cause of a person's.

Nature of a certificate
Each governmental jurisdiction prescribes the form of the document for use in its purview and the procedures necessary to legally produce it. One purpose of the certificate is to review the cause of death to determine if foul-play occurred. It may also be required in order to arrange a burial or cremation, to prove a person's will or to claim on a person's life insurance.

Before issuing a death certificate, the authorities usually require a certificate from a or  to validate the  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 ), a is often called in to verify  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 and cause for loss of one's license to practice. This is because of past scandals in which dead people continued to receive public benefits or "d" in s.

Death certificates may also be issued pursuant to a or an  in the case of individuals who have been declared. s and victims of mass disasters (such as the sinking of the ) may be issued death certificates in one of these manners.

In some jurisdictions, a is allowed to sign a death certificate. This is usually when the cause of death seems obvious and no foul play is suspected, such as a home accident or. In such cases, an is rarely performed.

The Shipman case
In the, in , the mass-er Doctor was found to have issued false medical certificates of death, which resulted in death certificates being issued for his victims, without the suspicious circumstances of their deaths coming to light. Following the public enquiry into that case, all medical certificates of death (except those issued in respect of individuals dead in absentia) must now be validated by an independent medical examiner.

Public documents
In the, and the 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 take a different view, and restrict the issue of certificates.

In the United States, certificates issued to the general public for deaths after may in some states be redacted to erase the specific cause of death (in cases where death was from natural causes) to comply with  confidentiality rules. In New York State, for instance, the cause of death on a general death certificate is only specified if death was accidental, homicide, suicide, or declared ; all other deaths are only referred to as "natural". All states have provisions, however, whereby immediate family members, law enforcement agencies, and governmental authorities (such as occupational health and safety groups) are able to obtain death certificates containing the full cause of death, even in cases of natural death.

United Kingom
Registration in the UK is organised separately in the constituent countries, and also in all crown possessions.

England and Wales
In England and Wales, registration of deaths began in. The death certificate lists when and where a person died, the name and surname, sex, date of birth (or age on older certificates), occupation, address, cause of death, as well as information about the person who reported the death. Beginning in, a doctor’s certificate was necessary for the issuance of a death certificate (prior to that, no cause of death needed to be given).

Scotland
Registration began in. Certificates are rather more detailed than in England and Wales. For example, the maiden surname is always given for females.

United Kingom
Since, (beyond 24 weeks gestation) have been registered separately, in a register that is closed from public access. A single stillbirth registration takes the place of both birth and death registration for the stillborn infant. Prior to such certificates gave no cause of death.

United States
A 2007 article in  magazine revealed that in the case of a stillbirth, it is not standard practice to issue both a and a death certificate. This has caused considerable grief to parents of stillborn babies (for whom the parents had often chosen a name), because they don't become parents unless the baby survives birth, but they still feel grief for an infant that had never officially existed.