Funeral Director Melbourne

Guide IV of V · Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria

Registration with Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria

In Victoria a death is usually registered by the funeral director, as part of their services, once the burial or cremation has happened. The registry can issue a death certificate only after that registration.

General information, not legal advice. Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria is the place to check anything on this page, and its fees and processing times are on its own site. The pages used here are named under Sources, at the end of this page.

Two hands on one registration

A registration is not one form from one person. Alongside the funeral director’s part, the medical practitioner or the coroner completes a form of their own, and that form makes up part of the registration.

A funeral director is not compulsory for this. The Department of Health says individuals can register a death by contacting Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, and the registry asks anyone registering without a funeral director to get in touch with it for help. Arranging a burial without a funeral director carries its own duties, set out in burial in a Victorian public cemetery.

Ordering a certificate yourself

The registry’s application to order a death certificate gives a legal certificate for a death registered in Victoria. Usually nobody in the family needs to make it: the funeral director generally applies on the family’s behalf. For anyone who does apply, the registry’s page on getting a death certificate sets out what to have ready. (For a death more than 30 years ago, it points instead to its family history search, which needs no proof of identity or eligibility.)

  • Details of the person named on the certificate, and proof of your own identity.
  • Proof that you are the next of kin. That status has to be shown to get the certificate or a package.
  • The next of kin’s authority, if you are not the next of kin, given to you as a third party.
  • The documents the registry emails you about after you apply. Processing begins only once every one of them has arrived.
  • Time for public holidays and the post, which the registry asks applicants to allow for.

Three smaller points from the same page. Every death certificate application includes a legal death certificate. Fees are not refundable except as the registry’s refunds page sets out, though a fee waiver may be available in some cases of financial hardship. And legal certificates arrive folded, which does not affect their validity as a legal document.

When a coroner is investigating, which certificate can be issued, and when, depends on the coroner’s findings; the Coroners Court of Victoria’s account of that is summarised in after a death is reported to the Coroners Court of Victoria.

When a baby dies

The registry’s rules here turn on how far a pregnancy had gone, and a doctor makes that call. A baby is stillborn if they died after 20 weeks or more in the womb, or weighed over 400 grams; the medical practitioner determines this.

A stillborn baby, or a baby who died soon after birth

The law requires the birth to be registered in both cases. Births must be registered within 60 days, and there is no fee. A parent of a baby born in Victoria can register the birth, and where there are two parents, each completes their own part: the registry asks that neither fill in the other parent’s section, because legally each must do their own. A parent who tells the registry they have concerns for their safety can have their information protected from the other parent.

The registry acknowledges the hardship of being asked to do this, and gives the reason it matters: registering the birth means the child is remembered in Victoria’s records, and it opens the option of a birth certificate in their memory. That certificate is not automatic; it can be ordered when the birth is registered or later.

For a baby who died soon after being born, a funeral director can register the death for the family and can also apply for a death certificate on their behalf if one is needed.

Legal and commemorative certificates

Two kinds of birth certificate are available. A legal birth certificate is marked as stillborn or deceased; a commemorative one is not. Commemorative certificates are decorative keepsakes and are not legal documents.

An early pregnancy loss

A birth cannot be registered when a baby died in early pregnancy, but the loss can be recognised with a recognition of early pregnancy loss certificate. It covers a loss before 20 weeks or, where the weeks are not known, a baby who weighed less than 400 grams, and it is free. It is not a legal document.

There is no time limit: a parent can apply at any time. The application goes in with a document showing the parent’s residential address, and the registry knows some details may be impossible to give after a pregnancy loss, so it asks for the mandatory ones and as many of the rest as can be managed. It gives 28 days, plus postage, as the turnaround, and postage, standard within Australia or economy overseas, is free.

Support

The registry’s death certificate page opens by acknowledging how hard the death of a family member or friend is, and says grief support services are available.

Sources for this page

Each sentence above draws on one of these official pages, read again on 9 October 2026.