Talk:Death certificate

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Can a death certificate contain false information, for example, a wrong year of birth? Are facts and dates verified before the publication of a document?

They sure can and often do contain false information, but the vast majority of the time it's simple error. The medical examiner, court, or funeral director (depending on the jurisdiction and the cause of death) generally obtains the information on the deceased from the family. They generally require photocopies of the deceased's birth and (if any) marriage certificates, but what happens if the family doesn't have those documents? There are a lot of people out there, even in the US, who simply don't have a birth certificate. Courthouses and registries burn down; people fleeing persecution may not bring their papers with them; people living under assumed names may have discarded any relics of their old life. In those cases, survivors can only guess at things like the deceased's date of birth, place of birth, and parents' names.

There simply isn't the time and money to spend on verification. What's more, it isn't feasible, especially for deceased born in countries where there is or was no central vital statistics registry or where war has disrupted the flow of paperwork. But even in the US this can be a problem. The actor Al Lewis claimed to be born in upstate New York in 1910, but when he died it turned out that he had been born in 1923, probably in Brooklyn. However, nobody can find a birth certificate of any kind for him. --Charlene 02:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)