Death Certificate
Having someone pass away can be very upsetting and saddening, and the last thing someone wants is to have to prove the individual’s death to people like creditors and estate officials. This is why death certificates came about. With a death certificate, you have a certified document that tells an organization that someone is officially dead.
Whether you’re looking into ancestry records, you’re trying to verify an individual’s death, or you’re related to someone who has recently passed away, a death certificate may be something that’s extremely important to you. The usefulness of a death certificate stretches across many expanses, and it’s helpful for more people than you might realize.
What is a Death Certificate?
A death certificate is a certified document that states that a certain person is dead. In its simplest form, a death certificate simply exists to verify that someone is dead. However, there are also other uses for death certificates, like confirming whether someone died under mysterious circumstances or giving information on the exact time and date of someone’s death. A death certificate can be incredibly helpful in a variety of situations because of that information.
What Information does a Death Certificate Include?
A death certificate may include a variety of information depending on the state in which it’s issued and any specific situations surrounding the state of the death. However, in most states, the death certificate will at least include these things:
- Full name
- Date of birth
- Date of death
- Cause of death
These are the very basics of a death certificate. After all, to be effective, a death certificate has to identify the individual in question and make sure it gives information about that individual. Some death certificates may carry additional information, but it varies significantly from state to state and may even vary from person to person.
Why is a Death Certificate Important?
If you need to use a death certificate, there are a wide variety of situations where using the death certificate may be an important part of getting your affairs in order. To do many of these things, you’ll need an official death certificate:
- Closing a bank or credit account
- Settling an estate
- Starting survivor benefits
- Closing social media accounts
Essentially, to do many of these things, whoever’s in charge needs to see that the person is truly dead. Although you may not have thought about the process of closing social media accounts after someone passes away, this is becoming more and more important over the years; scammers can hack into a deceased person’s social media account and use it to try and steal the person’s identity.
Can Enformion Help Me Find Death Certificates?
In most places, death certificates are public records; you just can’t receive a certified copy of a death certificate without certain restrictions. That means Enformion may be able to help you find death certificates, especially death certificates for historical individuals. However, you might be able to look up people who have died fairly recently as well. No matter why you need the certificates, Enformion can likely help.