Death certificates
How many death certificates you need, and why nobody says
The funeral director will ask how many copies of the death certificate you want. Most people say two or three, because two or three sounds like a lot of anything.
The usual advice from estate lawyers and funeral directors is eight to twelve. Complicated estates run higher.
The reason is dull and nobody explains it while you’re standing there. Most of the places you send one keep it.
A photocopy is no good, and here is why
Institutions want a certified copy. It comes from the office that registered the death, it carries a raised seal or a colored watermark, and it is printed on paper that photocopies badly on purpose.
A photocopy of one is just a piece of paper. Banks and insurers turn them down, not out of awkwardness, but because a certified copy is the only version they can be sure of.
Who keeps yours and who hands it back
This is the part that decides the number, and it splits about evenly.
The probate court keeps one. The county recorder keeps one if property changes hands. Life insurers usually keep one. Pension administrators generally keep one.
Bank branches often do not. A teller will take the certified copy, hold it up to the light, photocopy it for the file and give you the original back. So will some smaller companies.
You can’t tell in advance which kind you’re dealing with, and asking on the phone tends to get you a confident wrong answer. Ordering a few spare is cheaper than being short.
Being short is worse than it sounds
A second order isn’t expensive. It is slow, and it arrives in the mail at exactly the point where three other things are waiting on it.
Every state runs its own vital records office, prices differ, and turnaround differs by a lot. Some will do it over a counter the same day. Others take weeks.
Not everybody is allowed to order one
This surprises people. A certified copy isn’t a public document in most states. The list of who can request one is usually the spouse, the parents, the children, and whoever is handling the estate, and you may be asked to prove you’re one of them.
A neighbor helping out, or a cousin who has taken charge because nobody else could face it, may find they can’t order any at all.
The number you need is the number of institutions
Which is the useful thing to notice. Nobody can count the certificates until somebody can count the banks, the insurers, the pension and the rest.
That list is almost never written down anywhere, and it usually lives in the head of the person who has died. Families end up guessing high on the certificates because they’re guessing at the list.
Sources
That list is the one nobody has, and you can write it down while somebody can still tell you. Here is a finished binder, free to read: the example binder.