| Understanding the On-Site
Court Records Retrieval Process
Our On-Site Court Records searches are performed by people who
travel to county and municipal courthouses to search for records
that match the name and (usually) the SSN and/or DOB that have
been supplied to them. As a general rule, within two to
four business days, the researcher is able to return records
to us or notify us that no records were found.
However,
in an increasing number of counties across the country, researchers
are being required to submit a written request for records to
court clerks, who then pull the files for the researcher and
present them with the information. If the search subject
has an uncommon name, or if no records are found matching the
subject's name, the turn-around is still fairly rapid.
But it is important to remember that:
Turn-around times can
be dramatically increased when a number of records match a subject
name.
In many counties,
some identifying information is contained in the county's criminal
record index. This allows the researcher to limit their
request to records that belong to the subject, which speeds
up the process.
In others,
however, like California counties such as Sacramento, there is no identifying
information contained in indices, and the clerks must manually
pull the records of every person whose name is the same as your
search subject. For very common names like Jose Garcia
and John Smith, this is an extremely time consuming process.
It has been known to take as long as three weeks.
Quoting
turn-around times is complicated by a number of other factors,
as well, including:
· Courts changing policies or procedures without notice
· Errors in the submitted information, or in a record itself,
which result in the necessity of rechecking the files.
for these reasons, we cannot guarantee specific turn-around times
and cannot cancel searches or refund costs once a search request
has been submitted to a court. |
