Does the funeral home charge for additional death certificate?
I think they charge for the original ones – nothing is free there! So yes.
The cost is not exorbitant. Maybe 5 or 10 dollars per certificate. I don’t remember exactly.
I can see the charge for the original but the additional copies should be minimum or free.
I also needed copies of wills. I guess if you’re also the executor of the estate you’ll need to prepare in other ways that extend beyond the funeral arrangements. Be as prepared as possible because upon the death of a parent it’s like trying to drink from a firehose, especially if you’re also working full time.
You can’t get additional official copies of your birth certificate for free, either.
Agree with Drgoogle. SHouldn’t have to pay high prices for a piece of paper that takes time to get, when one needs it quickly and there are other options.
But you don’t typically need 15 copies of your birth certificate. And often copies are fine.
Just wanted to add that my dad died overseas, and the embassy gave me the death certificates. I don’t remember a charge. There was a form, Death of an American Abroad or some such.
This is a non profit that gives guidelines for starting end of life conversations. http://theconversationproject.org/starter-kit/intro/ Very much needed, imho.
Correct, diyu. As executor you leen letters of testamentary, you handle financial matters, I dealt with emptying, fixing up/selling the house, the car, getting taxes filed, (and the accountant up there didn’t set up a trust (or was it estate, I forget) tax ID # so the taxes had to be redone by my personal accountant)all stocks/investments/bills/life insurance you name it stuff had to be dealt with. This is not for the faint of heart. And especially as diyu said, if you are far away and have a fulltime job.
I made a copy of of marriage certificate to file the pension for my husband. They accept it. I have these copies around the house to save me a trip to the safe deposit box. One was so good because I copy the front and back on the same paper that it even fooled me in thinking it was an original.
If you’re the executor of the estate, you’ve just acquired a part-time job that will last a year or two (or more in some cases), although the intensity of it will likely decrease after the first few months.
There’s a lot more work if the process involves disassembling a household rather than dealing with the aftermath of the death of one member of a household that will continue to exist. But not all of the work has to be done by the executor. Anyone who has a key or can obtain one from the executor can go to the deceased’s house and clean out the refrigerator, for example.
ack, typo. You need letters of testamentary. The estate took over 2 years to deal with/close out, actually 3 due to the final tax filing, IIRC. Not an easy job.
@jym626 and @Marian I hear you. DH is executor of his moms estate and it has been a paperwork nightmare. And she had a small uncomplicated estate. Just the normal paperwork to maintain the house until it was sold, open an estate account, pay and record remaining expenses etc took a lot of his (well, mine in truth) time.
His siblings did not know why he made such a big deal. They thought someone was just going to magically cut them a check for a third of everything.
I cannot imagine doing all this if MIL had not had a will and good instructions for her funeral. It made the process a little easier.
I’ve decided to think of my second half-century (or part thereof) as a time for divesting material possessions. I think a great gift to my children will be them not having to dig through a house filled with their and their father’s decades’ worth of accumulation of stuff.
May I suggest that instead of throwing out old photographs, you label them and keep them? And that you keep old documents or at least a selection of them?
When my sister and I cleaned out our parents’ homes, we found a lot of photographs of people we couldn’t identify, and it was frustrating not to know who they were. We also found a lot of documents that weren’t relevant to settling the estates but were interesting in themselves – including a family member’s divorce papers from 1909, a letter from a long-lost relative written in the 1930s, military service records, an aunt’s high school yearbook from around 1920, bills for amazingly small amounts of money, piano recital programs from recitals in which my sister and I had performed, a picture of me looking very uncomfortable on Santa’s lap, and letters about my sister and me that our divorced parents had exchanged when we were young adults, expressing concerns about various aspects of our careers and romantic relationships.
And please keep the stuff that shows that you’re human and fallible. One of my favorite discoveries was a copy of my mother’s junior high literary magazine, with a handwritten poem taped inside with a note saying “This is the poem that would have been in the magazine if I had turned it in on time.” (We can all identify with that, can’t we?) And I found my father’s parents’ marriage certificate, which was dated only a short time before their first child was born. My grandparents had lied about their anniversary for decades to avoid having to admit that they “had” to get married. (Plenty of us can understand this situation, too.)
It’s good to know that our ancestors were as human as we are.
@Marian, I’m definitely saving photographs and documents. I’m focused on getting rid of old clothes and stuffed animals and things like that.
We went to my mom’s brother’s funeral. Turns out he saved every letter from my mom and me, among others. His DD let my mom know she had read everything. My mom was horrified, as this niece was not the nicest. Later, my mom destroyed all her personal letters.
Mom did leave behind a little booklet, where she listed wedding gifts. The average was $2.00. There were crystal bowls and vases, candlesticks, which all must have cost about that. The largest amount was $10.00.
By the way, I had to get death certificates from the county court house.
The cost for death certificates is to the courthouse, not the funeral home. One of those " hidden taxes".
When my aunt died, she left behind a trove of letters that she and her dad had exchanged while she was in college. Her kids and I sat around the day after the funeral, passed them around, and read interesting passages. They were priceless - sweet, charming, funny, and stern in turn. And some awesome dirt on my dad, her little brother. :D. It is one of my fondest family memories to have spent those few hours with my cousins.