Death Registration Malaysia 2026: JPN Rules, Fees, Forms

Death registration Malaysia comes down to one form almost nobody has heard of until they are standing at a counter holding it. Its name is JPN.LM02, and it is two documents at once: the entry in the death register, and the permit that allows a burial.

Everything else waits behind it. The bank, the EPF claim, the land office, the insurance file — each asks for a death certificate, and that certificate begins at a JPN counter. This page covers only the administrative part.

Quick Answer: in Peninsular Malaysia, a hospital, the police or DBKL verifies the death and issues Form JPN.LM02; the family takes the blue copy to the nearest JPN office and collects the death certificate. It is free. JPN treats a registration made within 7 days as ordinary in Peninsular Malaysia; in Sabah and Sarawak the window is 24 hours, using their own forms.

• Peninsular Malaysia — ordinary registration within 7 days of the date of death. No fee. JPN’s client charter allows 20 minutes at the counter.
• Sabah — 24 hours, free. Then RM 5.00 from day 2 to day 10, and RM 10.00 after the tenth day.
• Sarawak — 24 hours, free. Then RM 5.00 from day 2 to day 7, and RM 10.00 once it is reported later than that.
• Extra certified copies later: RM 5.00 each, plus RM 10.00 if the register has to be searched first.

Below: who verifies the death, the three clocks JPN runs, what to carry to the counter, what changes when the death was sudden, and what follows once the certificate is in your hand.

The first dayThree clocksWhat to bring

The First Day: Who Confirms the Death, and the Form It All Hangs On

JPN will not register a death on a family’s word alone. In Peninsular Malaysia it recognises three death verification agencies: a hospital, PDRM or DBKL. Whichever confirms the death issues Form JPN.LM02 (Pin.1/11) — in JPN’s own wording, the Death Register / Burial Permit.

It comes in two colours, and the difference matters:

• The blue copy goes to the informant — the family. One copy of it goes to the cemetery keeper for the burial.
• The grey copy is sent by the verifying agency to the nearest JPN office within 7 working days and recorded in JPN’s I-JPN system.

The family’s next step: attend a JPN office, register, collect the Sijil Kematian. Section 25 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1957 (Act 299) puts it plainly — on registering a death, the Registrar shall give the informant a Death Certificate.

If the death happened in hospital, the cause of death is certified by the doctor on Form JPN.LM09, or JPN.LM10 after a post-mortem; section 22 of Act 299 makes that the treating practitioner’s duty, not the family’s errand. If it happened at home, the first call is to one of the three verification agencies.

Three Different Clocks: Peninsular, Sabah, Sarawak

This catches people out in both directions: someone in Kota Kinabalu assumes they have a week, someone in Ipoh assumes they have a day. JPN runs three separate procedures, with different forms, windows and fee tables.

• Peninsular Malaysia — the client charter defines ordinary registration as an application within 7 days of the date of death, served in 20 minutes. No fee. Form JPN.LM02.
• Sabah — within 24 hours from the date of death. Free. Borang B and Borang N2.
• Sarawak — within 24 hours from the time of death. Free. The forms are Form III and Form XI.

Miss the window in Sabah or Sarawak and there is a middle band before the expensive one. In Sabah, day 2 to day 10 carries a RM 5.00 processing fee and after the tenth day it becomes RM 10.00. In Sarawak the middle band is shorter — day 2 to day 7 at RM 5.00, then RM 10.00.

⚠️ Editor’s Note: do not go by the page titles. JPN calls the cheap middle band Lambat (“Delayed Registration”) and the expensive one Lewat (“Late Registration”) — the opposite of what most English readers expect. Those English pages are also only half translated, with whole clauses still in Malay. Go by the number of days, which is identical in both languages.

Peninsular Malaysia has a late-registration route too — RM 50.00, two sponsors who are next of kin or who know of the death, a statutory declaration on Form JPN.LM28, and 2 working days on JPN’s charter. Read the page before assuming it applies: JPN restricts it to deaths that occurred before 1 December 2011. For a recent death brought in after day 7, JPN publishes no fee at all. Ask through e-Enquiry or call 03-8000 8000 rather than guessing at the counter.

⚠️ A second note, about the Act itself: the copy of Act 299 on the Home Ministry’s portal is written around far shorter periods than JPN works to — section 19 puts the duty to report a death at twelve hours, and section 21 needs the Registrar-General’s written permission once three days have passed. That same copy puts births at fourteen days, where JPN’s birth page says 60 days. When a quoted statute and a JPN service page disagree, the JPN page is the one the counter works from.

What to Bring to the JPN Counter

For a registration in Peninsular Malaysia, JPN lists four things. Bring originals.

• The blue copy of the Death Register / Burial Permit, Form JPN.LM02 (Pin.1/11).
• The deceased’s original identity card or identity document. This is how the MyKad is surrendered — there is no separate cancellation errand afterwards.
• The informant’s identity card, original and a photocopy.
• The original doctor’s certificate of the causes of death — Form JPN.LM09, or JPN.LM10 after a post-mortem — where the death happened in hospital.

Not everyone can walk out with the certificate. JPN limits collection to the deceased’s mother or father, husband or wife, children, full siblings, or the informant named on JPN.LM02. A cousin or neighbour can report and register, but the collection has to be arranged around that list.

Sabah and Sarawak ask for different papers. Both want a police report where the death happened at home; Sarawak also wants confirmation from the deceased’s community or ethnic head, plus the Medical Certificate of the Cause of Death (Form VIII) or the After Post-Mortem form (Form IX). If the deceased’s identity card is lost, a police report goes in its place.

When the Death Was Not Expected: Police, Post-Mortem, Inquest

A sudden death, an accident, a death with no doctor in attendance — registration still happens at JPN, but the cause-of-death line can stop being a signature and become an investigation.

• The verifying agency can be the police rather than a hospital ward — JPN lists PDRM among its three death verification agencies.
• After a post-mortem, section 23 of Act 299 requires the doctor to furnish a certificate to the Registrar — unless the doctor knows a Coroner or Magistrate intends to hold an inquiry.
• Where an inquiry is held, section 24 puts the cause-of-death certificate in the hands of the Coroner or Magistrate, who furnishes it to the Superintendent Registrar.
• The family’s own statutory duty to report then falls away: the proviso to section 19(2) says the subsection has no effect where an inquest or inquiry is held.

The paperwork then moves at the pace of the investigation, not the family. Ask the investigating officer which office the certificate will reach and when, and how the case’s own timeline affects the burial itself. Where a body is found and there is no information about where the death happened, section 18 sends the registration to the Registrar for the area the body was found in.

Where this guide stops. Whether a finding at an inquiry is correct, and what can be done about it, is a legal question decided case by case. Speak to a lawyer, and raise it with the court or officer conducting it.

Fees and Timings at a Glance

JPN publishes a service standard for only a handful of these transactions; where it publishes nothing, the table says nothing rather than inventing an estimate. Penalties sit separately from fees: section 35 of Act 299 sets RM 250 for each failure to give information of a death, and section 36 sets RM 2,000, 12 months or both for false information. Failure to report is compoundable and an offer stands for 14 days, but the 2019 Rules publish no amount.

After the Certificate: The List Nobody Hands You

The certificate is not the end of it; it is the key to everything else. A short list, in the order most families need it.

• Order extra certified copies at the counter. An extract of the death register is RM 5.00 each — Form JPN.LM13 in the Peninsular, Form N2 in Sabah, Form XI in Sarawak — and almost every institution keeps one. A search of the record first is another RM 10.00 and 14 to 30 working days.
• EPF. A Death Withdrawal goes in on Form KWSP 9KM (AHL), with the member’s death certificate as a required document. EPF also considers a one-time Death Assistance of RM 2,500 where the application reaches EPF within 6 months of the death and the member died before age 60 — see EPF’s Death Withdrawal page.
• PERKESO. If the deceased was a contributing employee, a Funeral Benefit of RM 3,000 (effective 1 June 2024) is paid — the actual amount incurred or RM 3,000, whichever is lower — and a Survivors’ Pension may be payable to dependants. See PERKESO’s scheme page.
• Veteran. For a Malaysian Armed Forces veteran, the family also reports the death to JHEV for the derivative pension — see this site’s guide to MyTentera and JHEV benefits.
• If there is a will, that is where the estate starts — what makes one valid, and what it cannot touch, is covered in Will Writing Malaysia.
• If there is no will, the shares are already decided by statute and an estate can take one of four routes depending on its size and contents: Estate Distribution Malaysia.
• Banks, insurers and utilities each run their own process, and most will ask for the grant that comes out of that estate route, not the death certificate alone.

One more thing: read the certificate before you leave the counter. JPN runs separate correction routes for clerical and factual errors, under different section numbers by region — 27(2) and 27(3) in the Peninsular, 31(2) in Sabah, 25(2) and 25(3) in Sarawak — and allows 15 working days to 3 months for a factual correction. A long wait, when a name is spelled wrong on the one document the bank needs.

Deaths Abroad, and Presumed Deaths

Two situations sit outside the normal counter route.

A Malaysian who dies overseas. The death must be reported to JPN, at any office in Peninsular Malaysia, on Form JPN.LK01, free. What JPN issues is not a Malaysian death certificate but a letter of Death Confirmation. The proof it asks for is specific: the death certificate from the country where the death happened, a confirmation letter from the hospital there, and one from the Malaysian embassy — originals and copies of each. JPN’s FAQ advises doing this within 6 months of the death, at JPN headquarters in Putrajaya.

A person missing and presumed dead. This one cannot start at JPN. It starts in the civil High Court, which issues a Presumption of Death order; only then does JPN update the record, on Form JPN.LM02-AM. Free, handled by JPN Putrajaya, though the application can be lodged at a state office and forwarded.

Walaoeh Verdict

Guard the blue form, and go to JPN early. That is really the whole of it. The blue JPN.LM02 is the burial permit and the basis of the register entry, and everything the family is asked for over the following months traces back to a certificate that does not exist until someone carries that form to a counter.

The registration is free and, in the Peninsular, a 20 minute job. Sabah and Sarawak write it as a 24 hour rule, so treat it as same-day rather than end-of-week. Order three or four extracts at RM 5.00 each while you are there, and check the spelling of every name before you walk out.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Sources

Every figure here comes from an official Malaysian government page or gazetted instrument, checked on 17 September 2026, when the JPN service pages carried a last-updated date of 16 September 2026. The regional pages were read in Bahasa Melayu as well as English.

• JPN — Ordinary Registration of Death (Peninsular)
• JPN — Late Registration of Death (Peninsular)
• JPN — Ordinary Registration of Death (Sabah)
• JPN — Death registration, day 2 to day 10 (Sabah)
• JPN — Death registration after day 10 (Sabah)
• JPN — Ordinary Registration of Death (Sarawak)
• JPN — Death registration, day 2 to day 7 (Sarawak)
• JPN — Death reported after 7 days (Sarawak)
• JPN — Search / Extract of Death Register (Peninsular)
• JPN — Extract of Death Certificate (Sabah)
• JPN — Report of Death Abroad (Peninsular)
• JPN — Report of Presumed Death (Peninsular)
• JPN — Client Charter
• JPN — FAQ: Death
• Home Ministry — Births and Deaths Registration Act 1957 (Act 299), PDF
• Home Ministry — Compounding of Offences Rules 2019, P.U.(A) 79, PDF
• EPF — Death Withdrawal and Death Assistance
• PERKESO — Survivors’ Pension and Funeral Benefit

The Attorney General’s portal at lom.agc.gov.my returns “Invalid request” for Act 299, so the Act was read from the Home Ministry copy linked above.