Burial transit permit
The permit that authorizes burial, cremation or moving a body — usually before anything else can happen.
What it means
Before a body can be buried, cremated or transported, most states require a permit from the local registrar, issued once the death has been registered. It is the document that makes disposition lawful, and it is separate from the death certificate.
A funeral director obtains it as a matter of routine, which is why it stays out of sight and out of the vocabulary. It becomes visible in the cases where there is no funeral director: a family carrying out its own arrangements, a death away from home, a body being flown to another state or another country.
Crossing a state line generally needs it, and crossing a national border needs considerably more — a consular record of the death, a mortuary certificate, and requirements set by the receiving country as well as the sending one.
The permit is also the point at which a delay becomes visible. It cannot be issued until the death is registered, and the death cannot be registered until the certifier has signed — which is what a family is actually waiting on when they are told the certificate is not ready.
Why it matters
It is the gate everything else waits behind, and the reason a delay in signing the medical certification stops the funeral rather than merely the paperwork.
For a family arranging anything themselves, or repatriating a body, it is the requirement most likely to be discovered late.
When you are likely to meet it
- When a death happens in one state and the burial is in another.
- When a family arranges a burial without a funeral director.
- When somebody dies abroad, or is being sent abroad.
How this varies by state
What the permit is called, who issues it, what it authorizes and whether one is needed at all are set by each state, and a few use a different instrument entirely.