Imagine your grandfather left a portion of his estate to his sister, but Great Aunt Irma has been gone for years. In order to probate his will or other legal documents, you may need to find Irma’s date of death.
If Aunt Irma passed away in the last 50 years, finding this information should be fairly routine. Look for a website that offers access to the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). This list contains more than 84 million individuals whose deaths were reported to the Social Security Administration.
But the SSDI has little information on people who died prior to 1962. One alternate tool to try is findagrave.com. This site includes burial information for millions of individuals, and some records even contain a photo of the grave marker.
