Pennsylvania Death Certificate: Who Can Order One and How

Pennsylvania death records are not open to the public, and the rules about who may order one are written into statute rather than left to agency discretion. This is one of the procedures covered in Pennsylvania name changes, IDs, and vital certificates. What follows covers eligibility, what the application asks for, the fee and the waivers that exist, the difference between ordering from the state office and ordering from a local registrar, and how an error on a filed certificate is corrected.

Who qualifies to order a certified copy

Recent Pennsylvania death records are closed. Section 801 of the Vital Statistics Law of 1953 keeps vital statistics records out of public inspection and bars the Department of Health and local registrars alike from issuing copies except as the act and the Advisory Health Board’s regulations permit.

The access standard for a death record is in section 804 of the same act: the Department issues a certified copy when a designated officer finds that the applicant has a direct interest in the content of the record and that the information in it is necessary for the determination of personal or property rights. That is a two-part test. A relationship to the decedent is not by itself enough, and neither is a general curiosity about the death.

Applicants who routinely satisfy the test include a surviving spouse, a parent, an adult child, a sibling, a grandparent or grandchild, the executor or administrator of the estate, and a person acting for one of them, such as an attorney or a funeral director. Insurers, pension administrators and other institutions that need the record to pay out a claim also have the direct interest the statute describes. An applicant outside that circle documents the purpose instead: a creditor pursuing a claim against the estate, or a title company clearing a deed, explains the property right at issue on the application.

What the application has to include

The Division works from a signed application form, not from an email or a phone call. According to the National Center for Health Statistics’ Pennsylvania vital records summary, every request must be submitted on an application form carrying the signature of the person requesting the certificate, accompanied by a legible copy of that person’s valid government-issued photo ID showing the name and mailing address the certificate will be sent to.

1. Collect the identifying details of the death

   The application asks for the decedent’s full name, date of death, county or city where the death occurred, date of birth, and the names of the decedent’s parents. Deaths from 1906 forward are held at the state office; a death before 1906 was recorded at the county courthouse where it occurred rather than by the Commonwealth.

2. State the relationship and the reason

   The form asks how the applicant is related to the decedent and what the certificate will be used for. Settling an estate, claiming life insurance, transferring a title, closing accounts and applying for survivor benefits are the purposes the Division sees most often, and each of them maps onto the statutory “personal or property rights” language.

3. Attach identification

   A photocopy of a driver’s license, PennDOT identification card, passport or other government-issued photo ID goes with the application. The address on the ID has to match the mailing address on the form, which is the step that trips up applicants who have moved recently.

4. Choose a number of copies

   Each institution that settles an account generally keeps the certified copy it is given, so estates commonly order several at once. Ordering extra copies in the original request costs the same per copy as ordering them later and avoids a second round of processing.

5. Send it with payment

   Mailed applications go to the Division of Vital Records at P.O. Box 1528, New Castle, PA 16103-1528, with a personal check or money order payable to Vital Records. The Division also accepts online orders paid by credit card for an added processing fee, and it staffs public counters in several cities. The Division’s telephone number is (724) 656-3100, listed with its mailing address by the National Center for Health Statistics.

The fee, and the applicants who pay nothing

As of 2026 the Department of Health charges $20 for each certified copy of a death record, the figure published for Pennsylvania by the National Center for Health Statistics. The same $20 buys a No-Record Certification when a search of the files turns up no matching certificate.

The fee is set administratively rather than by the legislature. Section 807(a) of the Vital Statistics Law of 1953 hands the Advisory Health Board the job of prescribing the fees applicants pay for copies. The figure printed in the regulation itself is long out of date: 28 Pa. Code § 1.46(b) still reads $3.00 for a certified copy of a death record, text last amended in March 1980. The published fee schedule from the Department controls, not the stale regulatory number.

Two categories pay nothing. Federal, state and municipal agencies obtain copies without a fee under section 807(b) of the act, provided the Commonwealth incurs no expense. And an amendment enacted October 31, 2024 added section 807(d), which waives the fee for certified copies for current members of the armed forces including reserve and National Guard components, for service members killed or fatally injured on duty status, for veterans, and for the spouses and dependents of all three. Section 807(e) narrows who may invoke that waiver: for a death certificate specifically, the waiver reaches a spouse, a representative of a deceased veteran’s dependent child, a representative of the estate, and the funeral establishment responsible for filing the death record.

Ordering from the state office, the local registrar, or the funeral home

Three channels produce the same certified document, and the practical difference is speed.

The Division of Vital Records in New Castle is the channel of record. It holds every Pennsylvania death registered since January 1906 and can issue copies indefinitely.

A local registrar of vital records is often faster in the first weeks after a death. 28 Pa. Code § 1.11 authorizes local registrars to issue certificates of death from the original certificates in their possession once the registrar has completed the Division’s training. That window is limited. Under section 809(b) of the Vital Statistics Law, once the original death certificate has been transmitted to the Department, the local registrar may keep issuing a copy of a certified copy for 90 days after the original certificate was issued, and no longer.

The funeral director is the third route and usually the simplest one. The person in charge of interment or removal prepares and files the certificate in the first place, so funeral homes routinely order the family’s first batch of certified copies as part of their services. Families who need more copies months or years later go back to the Division.

Correcting an error on a filed certificate

Names get misspelled, birth dates get transposed, and a cause of death recorded as pending gets amended once an investigation closes. Pennsylvania splits corrections by who is allowed to ask for them.

For everything except the medical certification and the place and date of death, 28 Pa. Code § 1.36 requires a signed statement covering the correction from the informant who signed the original certificate or from the funeral director who filed it. A correction to the date or place of burial comes from the funeral director in writing.

The medical side is handled separately. 28 Pa. Code § 1.37 requires a written statement from the physician or coroner who signed the medical certification in order to change the cause of death or the date or place of death. When the change would convert a death from natural causes to other than natural causes, the Department requests an affidavit from the person who signed the certification. A family member cannot make either of these changes directly; the request runs through the certifier.

Falsifying the record is a criminal matter. Section 902 of the Vital Statistics Law makes it a misdemeanor to willfully furnish false information for a certificate or to willfully alter one.

Deaths before 1906 and records old enough to be public

Two rules govern older Pennsylvania death records.

Statewide registration began in 1906, so a death before that year was not recorded by the Commonwealth at all. Those records sit with the courthouse in the county where the death occurred, as the National Center for Health Statistics notes in its Pennsylvania entry, and county practice varies on how to request them.

At the other end, closed records eventually open. Section 801 of the Vital Statistics Law of 1953 provides that when 50 years have elapsed after the date of death, the record becomes a public record, and directs that death records past that mark be maintained by the State Archives. Genealogists working on deaths from the early and middle twentieth century therefore use the Archives rather than the eligibility-restricted Division process.