Getting birth, death, and marriage certificates will be more convenient in the future, under a new state law. The legislation signed by the governor this week creates a statewide electronic database of those records, which currently can only be obtained from the county that issued them.
Outagamie County register of deeds Sarah Van Camp says that frequently causes problems in her office, such as when a resident comes in seeking a birth certificate for a passport and has to be told they need to travel to another county or contact them through the mail. “The way this is going work is they can come into any of their local registers office no matter where they live and they’re able to obtain their records,” she says.
The new system takes effect in January of next year. It will initially only include birth records since 1994, deaths since September of 2013, and marriages since last May, although Van Camp says more should become available in the coming years as they are added to the database.
Contributed by WHBY