Ordering Vital Records From State Agencies

Why every state runs its own process, what stays closed, and where to start



No federal agency issues a birth, marriage, or death certificate. Each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. runs its own vital records system under its own law, and only that one office controls the record you want. Before you can order anything, you need to work out which of these 51 separate registration entities actually holds it, and whether the record is even open to you yet.


Why Records Stay Closed: Privacy Law


A birth, marriage, or death certificate is not an open public record the way a deed or a court file often is. State law generally classifies vital records as confidential, and they stay that way until the closure period runs out or a state legislature votes to open them sooner. Even while a record is closed, most states will still issue a certified copy to a defined list of people: the person named on the record, a parent or legal guardian, a spouse, a direct-line descendant, or an attorney or other representative who can document a legal interest. Whoever requests it typically has to provide government-issued identification, and some states also require a notarized application. This is a matter of state vital-records law, not the federal medical-privacy law known as HIPAA, which does not govern the certificates a state registrar holds. Many states tightened these requirements further after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Congress's Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to set minimum security and identity-verification standards for birth certificates, since a birth certificate is often the first "breeder document" used to obtain a driver's license, passport, or Social Security card. States that wanted their birth certificates accepted for federal purposes had to certify compliance with those standards, which is part of why many vital records offices now ask for stricter proof of identity than they did a generation ago.


Coverage Grew State by State


Even after a law passed, compliance built up slowly, sometimes taking 20 years to reach 90 percent of events. Most New England states began statewide registration between 1841 and 1897, though Vermont held out until 1919. Middle Atlantic and Midwestern states mostly started statewide birth and death registration between 1878 and 1920, Southern states between 1899 and 1919, and Western states between 1903 and 1920. The Census Bureau did not count every state as fully reporting until 1933; today more than 99 percent of U.S. births and deaths are believed to be registered.


What Closes and What Is Open


Most states limit certified copies of a recent birth, marriage, or death certificate to the registrant, immediate family, or someone with a documented legal interest, and only open the record to the public after a set number of years that each state legislature sets on its own. Virginia opens birth records after 100 years and death, marriage, and divorce records after 25; Pennsylvania restricts births for 105 years and deaths for 50; New York releases birth and death indexes after 75 and 50 years. The wait varies considerably by state and can be lengthened by a later legislature. Once a record opens, however, the health department is often no longer the actual holder: Pennsylvania's public birth and death records move to the state archives and are digitized through a partnership with Ancestry.com, while New York's State Archives holds only indexes, not certificates, and excludes New York City entirely. County clerks frequently keep original marriage licenses or duplicate entries even after statewide registration began, which matters if the state office finds nothing.


Placing the Order


  • Order directly from the state or independent city vital records office first, by mail, phone, online application, or in person; this route is almost always the cheapest since no added service fee applies.
  • Check our birth records, marriage records, and death records directories, organized by state, for the current agency, address, and ordering instructions; each state page points you to the office that actually holds the record, so requirements differ by state.
  • Have identification and proof of eligibility ready, since a closed record is normally released only to the registrant, an immediate family member, or someone who can document a legal interest; ordering online usually adds a processing and shipping charge from the state's listed partner, most often VitalChek, which handles orders for more than 450 government agencies.
  • If the record is already public, check the state archives, a library microfilm reel, or FamilySearch before paying for a new certified copy. If the agency itself has no record, try the county clerk where the event took place, since counties sometimes kept their own originals or duplicates even after the state began requiring central reporting.



Need help finding more records? We have genealogy research services available. You can also try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1.3 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.


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