New York Vital Records, IDs, and Name Changes

Personal records in New York are spread across several offices, and which one handles a request depends on the document. Birth and death certificates come from a health department, name changes go through a court, criminal-record sealing runs through the court that entered the conviction, and identity documents come from the Department of Motor Vehicles. This hub maps the main categories of personal and government records in New York, defines the terms the individual guides assume, and links to step-by-step articles for each procedure.

What counts as a personal record in New York

A personal record is a government-held document that proves a fact about an individual: that a person was born, died, or married; what their legal name is; whether a criminal charge ended in a conviction; or that the state has verified their identity. New York does not keep these in one place. Life events sit with a health department, court records sit with the courts, and identity credentials sit with the DMV.

This hub covers five groups of records that most people need at some point: certificates for births, deaths, and marriages; legal name changes; criminal-record sealing; notarization and document authentication; and state IDs and DMV documents. It is written for individuals requesting or changing their own records, or handling the records of a close family member. It does not cover business filings, property deeds, or professional licensing, which follow separate rules and separate offices.

Key terms and concepts

A few distinctions run through every records procedure in New York.

A certified copy carries a raised or printed seal and is accepted as legal proof of the underlying event; an informational copy contains the same facts but is marked as not valid for identification. Passport, benefits, and estate matters usually require a certified copy, so it is worth confirming which one an agency wants before ordering.

Sealing and expungement are not the same thing. Expungement destroys a record as if it never existed. New York rarely expunges; instead it seals records, which hides them from most public and employer view while keeping them available to courts and law enforcement in defined situations. Outside a narrow set of automatically cleared convictions, sealing is the relief New York actually offers.

An apostille or certificate of authentication is an extra layer of verification placed on a New York document so a foreign government will accept it. It is issued by the Department of State, not by the office that produced the original record.

New York birth, death, and marriage certificates

Certificates for births and deaths are the highest-volume request in this category, and New York splits them along a geographic line. The New York City Health Department issues birth and death certificates for people born or deceased in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, or Staten Island, and does not issue certificates for Nassau, Suffolk, or any other county. For events anywhere else in the state, the New York State Department of Health handles the record. Registration of these events is governed statewide by N.Y. Public Health Law art. 41, which sets up the registration districts and the birth, death, and records titles that the local offices operate under.

As of 2026, a New York City birth or death certificate costs $15 per copy, and orders can be placed online, by mail, or in person by appointment through the NYC birth and death records office. Processing time depends on the method: online orders take about two to three weeks, while mailed requests can run roughly twelve weeks. Access is limited: birth certificates are generally released only to the person named, a parent listed on the record, or someone with a documented legal need, and death certificates go to a spouse, parent, child, or sibling, or to a person with a documented lawful right.

Marriage certificates follow a different path from birth and death records. In New York City the marriage record is held by the City Clerk who issued the license, and elsewhere it is held by the town or city clerk where the couple married, rather than by the health department. Anyone requesting a marriage certificate goes back to that issuing clerk, using the office where the license was obtained.

Changing your legal name

New Yorkers have a long-standing common-law right to adopt and use any name, simply by using it consistently in daily life. What a court order adds is proof: government agencies, banks, and schools will update their files when they see a signed order. An adult can change a name tied to marriage, divorce, or annulment without a separate court case, under the optional-name provision in New York’s name-change law. Any other change requires a petition to a court, filed in the Supreme Court, a County Court, or, in the five boroughs, the New York City Civil Court.

The court process is set out in N.Y. Civil Rights Law art. 6, which covers the petition, its required contents, notice, the order, and its effect. After a judge signs the order, the law can require the order to be published in a newspaper. Because a granted name change is a public record, a separate provision lets a petitioner ask the court to seal the papers and waive publication when publishing the new name could put the person at risk, such as in domestic-violence situations. The New York courts’ name-change guidance walks through the forms, the fee-waiver option, and the filing steps, and it notes that the court route does not apply to prison inmates and that a child’s name change follows separate rules.

Two related situations are worth flagging. A person with a past criminal conviction faces extra requirements when petitioning, and the same court guidance covers those rules. And an error a hospital made on a birth certificate can sometimes be fixed as a correction rather than a court-ordered name change. A court order changes the legal name, but it does not update other records automatically: a Social Security card, a driver license or state ID, a passport, and financial accounts are each separate follow-up steps handled by those agencies.

Sealing and clearing a criminal record

New York generally does not expunge adult criminal records. The main relief is discretionary sealing under N.Y. Criminal Procedure Law § 160.59, which lets a person who has been convicted of up to two eligible offenses, but not more than one felony, apply to seal those convictions once at least ten years have passed since the conviction or release from incarceration, whichever is later. Sex offenses, violent felonies, and class A felonies are not eligible, and the district attorney can oppose the application, in which case the sentencing court decides after weighing factors such as the time elapsed, the seriousness of the offense, and evidence of rehabilitation.

Two other paths clear records without that ten-year wait. A charge that ends in the accused’s favor, such as a dismissal or acquittal, is sealed automatically. Separately, a 2021 state law directed the automatic sealing and expungement of many past marijuana convictions. Sealing matters most for background checks: a sealed conviction is generally hidden from private employers and landlords, which is why it can ease housing and job applications. Even so, courts and certain licensing and law-enforcement agencies keep access in the situations the statute lists, and a sealed conviction can still count in a later criminal case.

Notarizing and authenticating documents

Many records tasks require a notarized signature, and New York notaries are commissioned by the Secretary of State through the Department of State. A notary witnesses signatures, administers oaths and affirmations, and takes affidavits and acknowledgments; a commission runs for a term of four years. Banks, law offices, and county clerk offices commonly have a notary on staff, and New York also authorizes electronic notarization under separate rules.

Notarization proves who signed a document. When a New York document has to be used by a government abroad, it needs a further step: an apostille or certificate of authentication, issued by the Department of State, which confirms that the notary or official who signed was genuinely authorized. Documents headed to a country in the Hague Apostille Convention take an apostille; others take a certificate of authentication.

New York IDs and DMV documents

The Department of Motor Vehicles issues New York’s identity credentials. A resident can hold a standard driver license or non-driver ID, an Enhanced license or ID, or a REAL ID-marked license or ID. Enhanced and REAL ID credentials meet the federal identification standard for boarding domestic flights and entering certain federal buildings, and they require additional proof of identity, Social Security status, and New York residency at the time of application. A standard license or ID still works for driving and everyday identification, but it does not satisfy the federal standard on its own.

The DMV also handles vehicle records that people treat as personal documents, including title transfers, duplicate titles, and registration. Because the required proofs differ by credential and change over time, the individual guides below cover the current document checklists for each DMV transaction rather than a single list that would quickly go stale.

Specific procedures and topics