This page was put in to help those searches that seem to be a 'dead end'.  Hopefully these few tips will help you find another missing link!  

Birth Certificates

Delay in Registration? the indexes to Birth, Marriages and Deaths are arranged by quarters (March, June, September and December). As there was often some delay in-between birth and the registration, a September birth might well not appear until the December quarter. You may not have the exact date for a birth or even the year, you may then have to search the indexes either sides of the suspected date. If this is the  case try an indirect search (see below)

Indirect Certificates -
Where the names of the brothers/sisters are known with certainty, it may well be better to get the birth certificate of one born in or near a census year.  This will give the same information for the parents but will give you an added bonus of an address where the family can be followed up in a census return!

Marriage Certificate

To find a marriage in the index when you have only the date of birth of one of the children to go by,  start looking in quarter following the birth (as sometimes the first birth was before the marriage) and then work backwards!

Where an entry is found which could be the right one, look up the other surname and see if there is a person of the right name with the exact reference number.
If so, then you know that you have the right marriage!

From 1912 you need not look up the other second party ( his or her name is given in brackets). Unfortunately in the early years of registration exact ages were not given frequently on marriage certificates only 'of age'.

Checking for people of the same Name -
Even with the rarest Surnames, more than one person with the same Christian name may be found.
Where you find an entry that seems to be the right one, you should always continue the search for the whole of the period .
For each entry that is checked and found to be incorrect, a refund is made against the fee paid.

Divorce  

Until 1857 divorce was only possible by special act of Parliament. However, in that year an Act made divorce possible to most people. The register of Divorces is still kept in the Probate and Divorce Department.  If a person remarried in the lifetime of the first spouse, then divorce is the usual explanation!

A certificate of adoption can be obtained giving the date of birth, names of adoptive parents, court of adoption and adoption order details.  Indexes of adoptions from 1924 are on open shelves, but  remember that the children are listed under the surname of the adoptive parents and the adoption might take place many years after the birth.  Under English law an adopted person over the age of 18 can obtain information on his/her parents but application MUST be made in person.

The English death certificate is not very helpful for tracing but will often yield a useful address for looking up in the census returns. If the cause of death is at all unusual, it may provide the vital clue for discovering a full report in the local newspaper.
Age at death is given in the indexes from 1866 only.

On payment of a fee, staff will search the register and send details. This may take a few days.

To obtain information from the original records, which are not open to the public, it is necessary to apply for a certificate by entering the appropriate details from the index on an application form.
Applications made in person are cheaper than postal applications, so if you can't apply in person it may be cheaper to employ an agent.
If you collect the Certificate personally it may be ready in three days, if you arrange for it to be sent to you by post it may well take up to a week in the UK

Other Supplementary Lists  -  checking some of supplementary lists may help with a brick wall!