I am facing the need to obtain a NSW death certificate for a person who passed away more recently than 30 years ago.
The NSW BDM website says:
This application form can only be used if the death occurred in NSW. If you are the next-of-kin named on the death certificate i.e. spouse ( married, defacto, same sex defacto ) , parent, or child of the deceased, the death certificate can be issued to you. If you are a relative not listed on the certificate, the certificate can be issued to you if the deceased HAD ( my emphasis ) no living spouse, children or parents.
This seems to me, somewhat ambiguous and also somewhat unworkable.
It is my understanding, that a person has a single "next of kin", and that spouses have priority, then children, then parents. I don't know exactly how the BDM department applies this. I do know that in WW1, there was a great deal of bickering over whether soldiers were allowed to name their mother as next-of-kin.
It also seems, from the BDM website, that what was recorded when the death occured has precedence, not the situation at the time when the certificate was sought.
Do death certificates now actually specify a "next of kin"? I have bought a few and recently inherited many more. But most of them are 50-150 years old. None of them explicitly seem to name a next-of-kin, as such.
Many of them don't name children, only something like ( 2 sons, 3 daughters ).
Here are some scenarios. I know some of you are experts and would be able to clarify these.
(1) My father died in 1991, less than 30 years ago. At the time, he was married to his second wife, who died in 1995. I am the only child named on his death certificate. In 1991, his second wife was his next-of-kin, not me.
How many hoops to do I have to jump through to prove she is dead, and therefore I am the next-of-kin? Bearing in mind, I am not her next-of-kin, because she has or had a son from her first marriage, who I only met once, don't know his middle name, may or may not be still living, had a very common surname and lived in another state. Anyway, the point is that I probably don't have legal standing to apply for my step-mother's death certificate either, so how can I legally prove that she is dead then ?
(2) Is it only the oldest child who can be the next-of-kin, and apply for the death certificate ?
(3) Suppose it was my grandfather who died in 1991. He had no spouse and two living children at the time of his death. My father is now deceased. His sister, my aunt, had no children and is currently in a vegetative state in a nursing home. The BDM website states that I need to get a letter of Authority, giving permission from the next-of-kin for me to apply to obtain a copy of the death certificate. Including my aunt's address, phone number, and signature. And also 3 pieces of ID, which she may not have.
I don't think she has a phone, and is probably incapable of signing anything.
(4) What happens when, at the time of the person's death, the death certificate lists none, or only one of, the deceased person's children, although there was more than one ?
(5) What happens when the father died in 1991, and his wife died in 1993, overseas, and has no Australian death certificate ?
These seem to be highly plausible scenarios.
When I married my current husband, a foreign citizen, the rigmarole was absurd. The foreign government demanded documentary proof that I had never been married in New South Wales. The fact that I had married my first husband in Melbourne did not seem to have entered their minds.
So my question is, how "practical" or alternatively "bloody-minded" is the NSW BDM department concerning death certificates in these sort of cases.
