How to Find a Deceased's Last Known Address After 48 Years
When a person dies, the paper trail of their lives does not end at that moment. New trails are left in the form of a death certificate, obituary, Social Security death index records and probate files. All four of these trails can be searched to locate the address of the deceased after 48 years. You may locate the information on the first record you search, but in other cases, you may need follow the trail until the end. Knowing the deceased's date of death or year of death and legal name will aid your search.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Contact the Department of Health in the state in which the deceased last lived. Order a death certificate. The death certificate will include the last known address in almost all cases.
-
2
Search for an obituary in the local papers if you know the city in which the deceased lived. Some obituaries will provide addresses. When the deceased lived and died in a nursing home or home of a relative, those clues may be provided. If that is the case, you will need to search for the address of the nursing home or relative.
-
-
3
Search the Social Security death index online to locate the last address of the deceased. The death index will provide the name of a town and state usually with a zip code. Those clues get you one step closer to locating the address if other records have failed.
-
4
Request to view the probate file of the deceased at the county courthouse in the county in which he died. The probate file will contain many documents, some which list the last address of the deceased.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
Older city newspapers tend to have full addresses provided within news articles and obituaries.
There may be cases in which a hospital completed the death certificate and failed to enter a last addresses. This happens more frequently in records older than 40 years than more contemporary records due to record keeping systems. Our records today are more complete and readily available.
