35%
Less wasted effort
24/7
Monitoring
2,500+
Sources
90%+
Match confidence
The hidden cost of pursuing deceased subjects
Every hour spent investigating someone who has passed is an hour wasted—plus the risk of contacting grieving families.
Wasted Investigation Time
Hours of surveillance, background checks, and location efforts on subjects who are no longer alive.
Lost Revenue
Resources spent on unrecoverable cases that could have been allocated to active, profitable work.
Reputation Risk
Contacting grieving family members can damage your professional reputation and client relationships.
The Importance of Subject Status Verification
For private investigators and skip tracers, accurate subject status information is fundamental to efficient case management. Deploying field resources to locate a subject who has passed away wastes time, money, and investigator capacity that could be directed toward productive cases. Even worse, contacting families of deceased subjects can generate complaints and damage the professional reputation that investigators depend on for referrals and client relationships.
Traditional death verification methods are slow and incomplete. The Social Security Death Master File, often used for bulk verification, has significant delays and gaps in coverage, particularly for recent deaths. State vital records offices may take months to process death certificates and make them available for searches. By the time a death appears in these official databases, investigators may have already spent significant resources pursuing the subject through traditional skip tracing methods.
Obituary monitoring provides a faster, more practical approach to death verification. Obituaries typically appear within days of death rather than months, and they often include location information that helps distinguish between individuals with similar names. For investigators managing portfolios of subjects, proactive monitoring can flag deaths before resources are deployed, preventing wasted effort on cases that should be closed or transitioned to estate-related investigation.
ObituaryMonitor integrates this verification capability into your existing workflow through bulk upload and API access. You can upload subject lists from your case management system, and our platform will continuously monitor for matching obituaries across over two thousand five hundred sources nationwide. When a high-confidence match is found, you receive immediate notification, allowing you to update case status and reallocate resources before any additional effort is wasted on an unproductive investigation.
Why investigators choose ObituaryMonitor
Automated death verification that integrates into your existing workflow.
Verify Status Before Investigation
Know immediately if a subject has passed away before spending time and money on surveillance, interviews, or location efforts.
Avoid Wasted Resources
Stop pursuing deceased individuals. Redirect your efforts to active cases and improve your success rate.
Respect Grieving Families
Prevent awkward and insensitive contacts with family members who have recently lost loved ones.
Close Cases Faster
Get definitive information to close cases quickly. Document subject status with obituary evidence.
Built for investigation workflows
- Monitor multiple subjects across all 50 states
- High-confidence matching reduces false positives
- Email and SMS alerts for immediate notification
- Bulk upload subject lists via CSV
- Obituary links for case documentation
- API access for system integration
Marcus T.
Skip Tracing Investigator, Atlanta
"In skip tracing, knowing if a subject has passed is critical. ObituaryMonitor helps us close cases faster and treat families with respect. It's become essential to our workflow."
Common investigation scenarios
See how ObituaryMonitor fits into your daily work
Debt Collection
Verify debtor status before initiating collection activities or legal proceedings.
Asset Recovery
Confirm subject status before expending resources on asset location efforts.
Locate Investigations
Screen subjects before field work to avoid pursuing deceased individuals.
Insurance Fraud
Verify claimant status as part of fraud investigation due diligence.
Background Checks
Include death verification as part of comprehensive background screening.
Legal Process Service
Confirm subject is alive before attempting service of legal documents.
Integrating Death Verification Into Your Workflow
For skip tracers managing multiple cases simultaneously, batch processing is essential. Our platform accepts CSV uploads containing subject lists from your case management system. Each subject can include name variations, last known addresses, and approximate ages to improve matching accuracy. Once uploaded, monitoring begins immediately and continues until you remove the subject or close the case.
The API integration option allows real-time synchronization between your investigative software and our monitoring platform. New subjects can be added automatically when cases are opened, and death notifications can trigger workflow updates in your system. This eliminates manual data entry and ensures that status information is always current across your tools.
Each notification includes the source obituary with enough detail to verify the match against your case records. The obituary often includes family member names, service locations, and other contextual information that helps confirm identity. For cases where the subject was being located on behalf of an estate or beneficiary matter, this information may also provide leads for related investigations.
Professional investigators appreciate the documentation value of our audit logs. When clients question why a subject was marked deceased, you can provide the specific obituary source and detection timestamp. This documentation protects your professional reputation and demonstrates the thoroughness of your verification process. The negative search certificate feature also documents that comprehensive monitoring was conducted when no death was found.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers for skip tracers and investigators
How does ObituaryMonitor help skip tracers?
ObituaryMonitor monitors 2,500+ obituary sources 24/7 and sends instant alerts when a subject appears deceased. This helps you verify status before deploying field resources, avoiding wasted trips and respecting grieving families.
Can I monitor multiple subjects at once?
Yes. Our Professional plans allow monitoring of 50-500+ subjects simultaneously. You can bulk upload subject lists via CSV and receive alerts for any matches across your entire portfolio.
How accurate is the death verification?
We use multi-factor matching including name, location, and age to achieve 90%+ confidence before alerting. You'll receive the obituary source link as documentation for your case files.
How quickly will I be notified?
Our system scans sources continuously. Most obituaries are detected within 24-48 hours of online publication, and you'll receive email and SMS alerts immediately upon match detection.
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