licenses & feesstate

Birth and Death Certificates — $30 Each, Unless the Claim Needs Them

The Public Health Law sets a $30 fee for a certification or certified copy of a birth or death record. The same section then removes it: no fee at all where the record is required by the federal veterans department to determine eligibility for benefits. A claim needing four certificates is $120 that nobody has to pay.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

What it's worth: No fee for a search, certification, certified copy or certified transcript of a birth or death record required by the federal veterans department to determine benefit eligibility — against a standard fee of $30

The statute sets the ordinary fee at thirty dollars for a certification of birth or death, a certificate of birth data, or a certified copy or transcript of either.
The exemption is stated in the same section and covers a search as well as the certificate itself.
The same exemption also covers records needed for school entrance, an employment certificate, and public relief purposes.
A separate priority handling fee of fifteen dollars may be charged; the statute does not state that it is waived.

Who is entitled to it

Your discharge is within the range these programmes run on.
Your home is in New York.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

1State the purpose in the request, in the statute's own words: the record is required by the federal veterans department to determine eligibility for benefits. The exemption attaches to that purpose and to nothing else.
2Cite the section — Public Health Law §4174 — if the office does not recognise the exemption. It sits in the fees subdivision of the same section that sets the $30 charge.
3Order every certificate the claim needs in one request. The exemption is per record, not per claim, and the saving compounds across a file that needs a marriage, a birth and a death record.
4Ask whether the search fee is waived as well as the certificate fee. The statute names a search, which matters when a record is old and the office has to look for it.
5Do not pay for priority handling on the assumption it is covered. The statute provides for a separate fifteen dollar priority fee and does not say the exemption reaches it.
6Ask a state benefits adviser to make the request with you if an office refuses. This provision is old, specific and easy for a busy counter to miss.

Form: The ordinary certificate request, with the purpose stated
File with: The state health department, or the local registrar holding the record
Documents you will need: dd214 ny
No renewal needed

Worth knowingThis is a fee waiver measured in tens of dollars that regularly decides whether a claim is filed this month or next. Survivors assembling a dependency claim need a marriage certificate, a death certificate and often a birth certificate at once.

CorrectionThe exemption is about the PURPOSE, not the person. A veteran ordering their own birth certificate for a passport pays the $30 like anyone else; the same veteran ordering it for a federal benefits determination pays nothing.

Known gapThe statute governs the state commissioner's fees. Whether a city registrar operating its own records system applies the same waiver, and what proof of purpose it wants, are questions for that registrar.

Sources

authority · statuteN.Y. Public Health Law §4174 — records; transcripts and certifications by commissioner; fees

Why only one source type: The statute states the fee, the exemption and the exempted purposes in the same section, and was read verbatim this session. The health department's own vital records pages return 403 to an automated fetch and could not be read, so no operating source is carried rather than one taken from a summary site.

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.