Error on Death Certificate
Discussion
This is a slightly odd one.
My father died in late July and we registered his death on 2 August. We have just noticed that the registrar has made a mistake - when she signed every certificate she dated them all 2 April.
I'll call the registered office in the morning but has anyone had a similar experience, does it actually matter?
My father died in late July and we registered his death on 2 August. We have just noticed that the registrar has made a mistake - when she signed every certificate she dated them all 2 April.
I'll call the registered office in the morning but has anyone had a similar experience, does it actually matter?
I think the answer is get it changed so it is right. But OTOH, having dealt with the affairs of both parents when they went, I can't think of anything that would go wrong if the error were left unchanged. The estate is supposed to be "frozen" whilst it is dealt with. As the date on the cert is earlier than it should have been, there are likely to have been finance transactions that happened after the wrong date of death. But I doubt anyone would notice.
So yes I would get it fixed, but if you didn't I doubt that any trouble would ensue.
So yes I would get it fixed, but if you didn't I doubt that any trouble would ensue.
pidsy said:
Get in contact with the registry office asap. When I registered my mums in September they were very clear that I check the printout several times before she signed it as it’s a difficult process to get it altered.
They will advise on what you need to do.
That's the same process we went through, three of us checked the details before the registrar signed. The registrar then made a mistake with the date she hand wrote next to her signature. They will advise on what you need to do.
I'll report back tomorrow!
Mr_J said:
The date of death is correctly recorded. It just looks odd that his death appears to have been registered 4 months before it happened!
Just get it corrected. If he died in hospital, a yellow (A5) Medical Certificate Cause of Death form will have been filled out by the doctor present (or in charge) at the time. This form will have date and time of death. We actually challenged the date as the time my mother was discovered as deceased (on a palliative care ward) was 00:12. We stated to the registrar that we believed she had died before midnight, so on the previous day - she accepted and registered it as that.See:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/medical...
If the date of registration is vastly different from the date of death, you may well have the Deprtment of Work and Pensions coming after you to claim money back! The DWP were late recording my mum’s death, and wrote (albeit with profuse apologies) to claim a week’s pension back. That letter went in the bin quicker than you could say ‘Parking Eye’.
Mr_J said:
The date of death is correctly recorded. It just looks odd that his death appears to have been registered 4 months before it happened!
I'm sure you'll be fine then. It's clear that they're in the wrong by comparing the two. Hopefully by looking in their diary (to confirm when you attended) and applying common sense they'll have enough to satisfy themselves of what they should have written.I would think it definitely does matter with a signing date of prior to your Fathers death - condolences to you.
I'm a little surprised that its taken this long for anyone else to notice as that assumes that there have been some organisation's who also haven't noticed the error ?
I would get it corrected -its a legal document after all - and I would also not be happy to pay any fees for this.
Best of luck in getting it sorted.
I'm a little surprised that its taken this long for anyone else to notice as that assumes that there have been some organisation's who also haven't noticed the error ?
I would get it corrected -its a legal document after all - and I would also not be happy to pay any fees for this.
Best of luck in getting it sorted.
My father had been ill for a long time which gave us all plenty of time to try and get things in order. That was all generally achieved and his estate is straight forward / small enough to sort out and no one had asked for a copy of his death certificate.
On Saturday my mum had tried to close his final bank account, a joint account, that used to have direct debits for utilities coming out of it. That bank wanted to see his death certificate. It was only then that my mum noticed the error, the bank didn't!
I didn't make any progress today. A contact us link on the local authority website led to a generic response to use this form to correct errors and pay us £87 please. It did eventually yield an email address for the registry office and a follow up email was sent.
I'll see what tomorrow brings.
On Saturday my mum had tried to close his final bank account, a joint account, that used to have direct debits for utilities coming out of it. That bank wanted to see his death certificate. It was only then that my mum noticed the error, the bank didn't!
I didn't make any progress today. A contact us link on the local authority website led to a generic response to use this form to correct errors and pay us £87 please. It did eventually yield an email address for the registry office and a follow up email was sent.
I'll see what tomorrow brings.
The registry office have been very helpful. I was directed to log a formal request to make an amendment through their website, while fees are listed they are not paid when the request is submitted. Within 48 hours (perhaps less, I've been travelling with work this week) I received confirmation that no charges would be levied and I simply have to post all the certificates to them and they'll send back new certificates with the correct date.
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