P.R. Laws tit. 24, § 1108
A person’s death certificate, to which § 1101 of this title refers, shall be delivered to the registrar within the shortest possible time and not later than twenty-four hours after the time of death, by any of the relatives or residents in the house of the decedent who is of legal age, or by the undertaker or the person in charge of the burial, or by any of the other persons enumerated in § 1101 of this title. The person in charge of presenting said certificate shall obtain the necessary personal and statistical data from someone having knowledge thereof, who shall sign said certificate and write his address thereon. Said certificate shall then be presented to the attending physician or to the physician who is to issue the medical certificate as to the cause of the death, as hereinbefore provided, who shall forthwith fill out and sign the said certificate, or to the prosecuting attorney or any other officer authorized to investigate the cause of death, when this may be necessary, according to § 1107 of this title, so that he may set forth such cause over his signature. Then there shall be set forth over the signature of the undertaker or the person in charge of the burial, the facts relative to the date and place of the interment, cremation, or removal of the corpse, and the certificate shall then be presented to the register for obtaining the corresponding burial permit or removal-and-burial permit, as may be necessary; Provided, That in case the person bound to present the death certificate does not know how to read and write, such certificate shall be filled out by the registrar with the information said person shall furnish him.
The undertaker or the person in charge of the corpse shall deliver the burial permit or removal-and-burial permit, as the case may be, to the keeper of the cemetery of the place where the interment is to be effected, before interring or otherwise disposing of the corpse.
When a death has occurred outside the domicile of the deceased, the head of the house where said death has occurred, or, in default thereof, another resident or neighbor of legal age, may prepare and present the death certificate.
History —Apr. 22, 1931, No. 24, p. 228, § 14; Apr. 28, 1954, No. 24, p. 152.