Death in a foreign land

Thank you Rob for you offer of help.

There are differences country-to-country I am sure, but in my case, Canada and Mexico, I have to present original long form documents, affixed with an official seal of Manitoba Vital Statistics and have the documents appostilled by a Canadian government official, in our case here in Acapulco in order to get an official death certificate and claim Cathy's remains. In addition of course to the police and coroner's reports by local authorities. Appostille in this case means an approved translation to Spanish by an authorized and recognized government official of Canada.

This appostille business is a recent thing for Canada which joined a number of other countries in agreeing to a formal, joint, agreed-upon process to deal with exactly this.

It is worth a google.