NY Vital Records Overview

• In 1881, New York State began the mandatory registration of all births, marriages, and deaths on centralized certificates filed with the State Department of Health (DOH) at their Bureau of Vital Records (BVR).

• More than 1300 municipalities have their own copies, but older records were often kept in ledgers with only summary information.

• While in most states, older records become publicly available either at archives and/or on the Internet, in New York, the records are locked away at the DOH.

• Aside from general interest, academia, and health histories, vital records are used in legal matters:

  1. Probate courts require kinship proceedings when decedents die without immediate next of kin 

  2. People seeking out dual citizenship need to prove their lineage 

• There is a public interest in access to vital records as well; being unable to prove if someone is married or deceased leaves open the possibility of fraud.

Arcane Laws & Regulations

• Certified copies of birth and marriage records are generally limited to the parties to the event.

• Certified copies of death records are generally limited to immediate relatives (spouse, domestic partner, parent, child, sibling).

• Relatives who need official copies of records are often forced to seek a court order.

• There is no statutory right to historic records. If the DOH were to rewrite their rules access rules, they could simply remove all or nearly all access. 

• Unlike many states, older records don’t move to the archives where they can be viewed on computers, microfilm, or online.