Death certificate legalisation

Legalisation is the stamp that lets a death certificate issued in England be accepted in another country. The certificate itself is issued by the register office; legalisation confirms to a foreign authority that the signature and seal on it are genuine.

When it is needed

A death certificate is legalised for use abroad: to settle an estate in another country, to make an insurance claim there, or as part of the papers that travel with a coffin on a repatriation. Which form of legalisation you need depends on the destination country.

The steps

1. The death certificate: the original, from the register office where the death was registered. An interim certificate from the coroner is not a death certificate and cannot be legalised on its own; a solicitor or notary can certify it first.
2. Apostille: the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office attaches an apostille to the certificate. For a country that is a member of the Hague Apostille Convention, this is the whole process.
3. Consular legalisation: for a country outside the Convention, the apostilled certificate then goes to that country's embassy or consulate in London for its own stamp.

What it costs and how long it takes

When we last checked, the FCDO charged £45 for the standard paper service, plus postage or courier, and £35 for an e-Apostille, which some countries accept and some do not. The standard service takes several working days, and consular legalisation adds the embassy's own timescale on top. For a repatriation we obtain the legalisation ourselves, in the sequence the destination country asks for, and we build its timing into the date we give you.

Read next

The certificate itself, and how many copies to order, is in how to get a death certificate. Where the apostille sits among the other papers is in what documents a repatriation needs, and we obtain it as part of every repatriation from the UK.

Related terms: Registering a death and Body repatriation. Every term in the funeral glossary.