Sunday July 28th the bill passed by the legislature to lock up Birth, Death, Marriage and Divorce records starts working. Births for 100 years and Deaths, Marriages and Divorce records for 25 years. You can still get your own record, your parents, grandparents and great grandparents, and the other way your children, and grandchildren, but if you are searching, or are an aunt, uncle, nephew or niece you are out of luck. The cost for a certified record goes up by $5 also. They will have information copies with a big disclaimer that cannot be used for any legal purpose. The information death certificates will NOT have the cause of death. The law did not list a cost for an informational copy.

So if you need a Birth, Death, Marriage or Divorce record right now it is cheaper, and available to all. After July 28th you might not be able to get it unless you wait 25 years or 100 for a birth record.

They did agree to leave the indexes open for research, but finding a Washington birth index is pretty hard. Family Search does have a birth index on microfilm in Salt Lake City from 1907 to 1954 and there are some of the birth certificate microfilms on permanent holds in our state. Problem here is that Family Search does not send out microfilm anymore, so you need to go to Salt Lake City to see the index.

Here is the article with the copy of the bill passed by the legislature.