Section 3705.23 of the Ohio Revised Code tells the director of health, the state registrar and every local registrar to issue a certified copy of a vital record to any applicant who sends a signed application and the fee, unless the record has stopped being public under a short list of exceptions. For a death certificate that means a genealogist, a neighbor, a title researcher or a reporter can order one on the same terms as the widow. A certified copy counts for all purposes as the original and is prima facie evidence of the facts in it in every court in the state.
The one piece of the record that is held back is the Social Security number. For the first five years after a death it is left off the certified copy unless one of a long list of people asks for it and proves who they are: the spouse, a lineal descendant, the executor or administrator or their attorney, a county veterans service officer, a licensed class A or B private investigator, a law enforcement or prosecuting official, a member of the news media, an agent under the decedent's power of attorney, a funeral director acting for one of them, and anyone else the law authorizes to act for the decedent or the estate. Local health offices are listed on the Ohio county pages.
- Twenty one fifty, found or not: since January 1, 2025 the state fee pays for the search of a birth or death record, not for a guaranteed certificate.
- No proof of kinship: state law makes a certified death record available to any applicant who signs and pays.
- Five years: how long the Social Security number stays off the copy unless a listed person asks for it.
- 1971: every Ohio death before that year is in the custody of the Ohio History Connection, not the Department of Health.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Ohio's own systems: the Ohio Department of Health page on ordering certificates, section 3705.23 of the Ohio Revised Code, section 313.10 of the Ohio Revised Code on coroner records, the Ohio History Connection guide to death records, the department's notice on the new death registration system, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The fee and what happens when nothing is found
The Department of Health lists a certified death record and a certified fetal death record at twenty one dollars fifty each, and a stillbirth certificate at no charge. Since January 1, 2025, under section 3705.24 of the Revised Code, the twenty one fifty is a search fee owed whether or not a record is located, so a wrong year or a misspelled surname costs the full amount. If a payment is more than two dollars over the fee, the excess is refunded. The department notes that mail applications postmarked before January 1, 2025 still get a refund when nothing is found.
Three ways to order from the state
The online portal takes Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express. The bureau processes online orders within five business days and expects delivery in the continental United States in about three weeks by ordinary mail, and there is no expedited option. An online order cannot be canceled once it is placed, covers only Ohio records, and cannot be used for a death more than fifty years old, which has to be requested from the local vital statistics office where the death happened.
The department also says not to order online for genealogy, dual citizenship, international legal matters or an international marriage, because those uses need a mailed application.
Mail orders use the Application for Certified Copies and go to the Ohio Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, PO Box 15098, Columbus, Ohio 43215-0098, with a check or money order in United States funds. The bureau asks applicants not to send cash or card numbers, offers no expedited mail service, and says mail orders usually take four to six weeks. After three weeks the status of an order can be checked by email at Vitalstat@odh.ohio.gov.
The state office at 4200 Surface Road in Columbus opens to the public from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays, but its same day service is for birth records only, so a death certificate in a hurry has to come from a local office.
Local health departments are the fast route
The department points anyone living, working or traveling in Ohio to more than a hundred local vital statistics offices, run by local health departments, that offer in person service or other ways to get same day certified copies. For death records this is often the better choice, because the health department of the place where the death took place can also certify deaths from before 1971, which the state no longer holds. The Ohio History Connection gives the same advice for anyone who needs a certified copy of an old death certificate: contact the health department of the county where the person died.
Deaths before 1971 and the History Connection
Ohio's administrative code allows death records older than fifty years to be moved from the Department of Health to the Ohio History Connection for archiving, and the department says every death before 1971 is already in the History Connection's custody. The two official pages describe the cutoff for state orders slightly differently: the online ordering rules say deaths more than fifty years old, while the archive note says deaths before 1971. In practice both point the applicant to the local office where the death occurred for a certified copy.
The History Connection's Archives and Library in Columbus holds state death certificates from December 20, 1908 through 1970, stillborn death certificates from December 20, 1908 through 1953, and Columbus death certificates from 1904 to 1908. Its free online Ohio Death Record Index covers state death certificates for 1913 to 1944 and 1954 to 1970, stillborn certificates for 1913 to 1935 and 1942 to 1953, and the Columbus run. Since July 1, 2026 the 1954 to 1970 certificates can be viewed digitally at reference kiosks in the Ohio History Center reading room. The archive cannot legally certify any of these copies, because it did not create them.
Deaths before December 20, 1908
Statewide death recording began in 1867, when the probate court of each county kept a one line ledger entry for each death, often with the birthplace and cause of death. There is no statewide index for those years, so the county of death has to be known. The History Connection holds probate death records for only 24 of the 88 counties, and for the rest it sends researchers to the county probate court or county archives, and for some northwest Ohio counties to the archives at Bowling Green State University.
Before 1867 Ohio kept no official death records at all, and the archive suggests newspapers, church records and will and estate files instead.
Coroner records and autopsy reports
Section 313.10 of the Revised Code makes a county coroner's records public, including the autopsy observations and conclusions, and anyone may get a copy by written request for twenty five cents a page with a one dollar minimum. The coroner of the county where the death was pronounced handles release. Preliminary autopsy and investigative notes, photographs of the decedent, suicide notes, medical and psychiatric records given to the coroner, confidential police investigation records and some lab reports are not public.
Next of kin get the full file on written request, in order of priority: the surviving spouse, then each adult child, then each parent, then the brothers and sisters, and after them the estate's representative. A journalist may ask in writing to view the closed material other than police records but may not copy it, and an insurer may get the full file to handle a claim tied to the death.
Ohio's new death registration system
Funeral directors, coroners and physicians now file Ohio deaths in the Ohio Vital Records System, which replaced the old Electronic Death Registration System in four phases between October 22 and December 15, 2025. Local health departments had moved to it first. The department says the new system brings electronic submission and built in payment and ordering. Families do not use it themselves. A death that had been started in the old system was finished there and converted into the new one once registered. Corrections to a death certificate are handled by the Bureau of Vital Statistics.
Questions about Ohio death records
Related Ohio records
Ohio birth records from the same bureau are covered in the Ohio birth certificates guide, probate and common pleas files in the Ohio court records guide, and requests under section 149.43 in the Ohio public records law guide, with local offices on the Ohio county pages.