Why do they ask $26.00 for a death certificate in Michigan?

Question

yet Florida is 5.00?

Answer 1

Well, in Texas if you want a certified death certificate it is $20.

Answer 2

If you don't like the quality, price or service in your {Bank / Supermarket / Drug store / Rental car} you can go to another one. If you don't like it at the courthouse, guess what? You are stuck. That, incidentally, is why service sucks at DMV across the country. (I pay $52 a year for AAA just so I can renew my license and registration with them and skip the DMV. The maps and roadside assistance are gravy. )

Prices vary all over the country depending on how much other revenue streams a state has, how close the last election for County Clerk was, how many complaints they receive about high prices and how nice the Governor wants his employees to appear.

Let us face it, it doesn't take much for a clerk to look something up and walk over to the Xerox machine. Time and materials aren't going to determine the price, the way they do at, for instance, your auto mechanic.

West Virginia put a pile of BMD certificate on-line, for free. The Secretary of State in Illinois, working with a regiment of volunteers form the Illinois Genealogy Society, has marriage and death records on-line. Different states put different value on our odd little hobby.

Answer 3

If you haven't noticed, Michigan is in deep financial trouble. The sale of official documents in a very ethnically diverse state makes a whole lot of money for the Secretary of State's office.

I can tell you, however, that if you contact the Office of the County Clerk for the place where the person died, you can get a copy of the death certificate much cheaper than you can through the Secretary of State's record unit. Bay County charges $15 for the first copy and $8 for subsequent copies. So you can save a bit, particularly if you're researching with a friend and can take advantage of the multi-copy record.

Answer 4

I live in califrornia and I have order many death records for only $13.oo. I also call the county that I am needing the records from like I have some family that has die in Lansing, Adrian and Ann Arbor. I have to called some  parts of Ohio on my husband side and they have cost me 15 bucks.