Fair Credit Reporting
We all know that we require birth records for many things in life, but we never think about needing a death record. Alaska death records are required to finalize estates after somebody passes away. Just like a birth record was proof of your birth, a death record is proof of a death and is required to close out many accounts.
Alaska death records were required by law starting in 1913. Prior to this year, records were sporadic. In some cases, Alaska may have an older record on file, but they will not research it for genealogy purposes. Alaska is a closed record state, which means that their death records are not part of the public domain until after fifty years. Before this time, only a parent, child, grandchild, or legal representative of the named will have access to the record.
When requesting Death records you will need to know the name of the deceased, as on record, so be sure you know if they went by a different name than they had on record. It can help if you know the date of death or as close to it as you can get, also if you know the spouse and date of the persons birth this will help, they will also need to know the city or county that the person died in to do an accurate search.