If you apply for a birth certificate for a person who has died, we will issue it as follows:
- Legal birth certificate – with an annotation that the person is deceased
- Commemorative birth certificate – with no annotation that the person is deceased.
For the certificate to be issued, your application must be in accordance with the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages access policy.
All our certificates provide important recognition of significant life events for individuals and families. A legal birth certificate is a legal proof of identity document for official purposes, such as claiming government benefits, enrolling a child in child care or school, or getting a passport or driver's licence. To prevent fraud and protect people’s identity security we include ‘deceased’ annotations on legal birth certificates of people who have died.
Deceased indicator policy
View the Deceased indicator policy.
Updated