Roma, The Social Security Administration made a decision to pull death records from the Death Master File (what they call the SSDI) in November 2011. Your father's death might have been pulled if the information was given to the Social Security Administration by a state vital records office in a state with closed records. If a person dies in a closed records state, the Social Security Administration will publish the death in the DMF if the family rather than the state notified them. http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/import-change-dmf.pdf You don't mention where your father died, but this action immediately pulled 4.2 million deaths out of the file. The SSA stated that the decision will "add about 1 million fewer records annually." Yours, Barbara