California Bankruptcy Court Records

Bankruptcy cases are filed in the bankruptcy division of U.S. Courts, but there are certain cases where state law determines the course of action. In California, authority to determine the rights to property, validity of liens and exemptions are determined by state law. So, in bankruptcy cases, California courts have a major role to play.

Due to consistent demand for easy access to California bankruptcy court records along with other courtroom records, government finally decided to make a database where the general public could extract information at a marginal cost. This database is PACER or Public Access to Courtroom Electronic Records. This database links you to the court of your requirement so that you can get the information you are looking for.

Accessing California Bankruptcy Court Records

To access bankruptcy court records of California, you need to know in which court the bankruptcy has been filed and in which part of the state is it located. There are four Bankruptcy Courts in California, namely the bankruptcy courts of Central, Eastern, Northern, and Southern California.

The Bankruptcy Court of Central California is in Los Angeles and deals with the cases of this city. The mailing address of the courthouse is 255 East Temple Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. You can also call the court at (213) 894-2365. To access the bankruptcy court records, click on https://ecf.cacb.uscourts.gov/.

To reach the Eastern Division of California Bankruptcy Courts, the address is 3470 Twelfth Street, Room 134, Riverside, CA 92501. The phone number of the court clerk is 213-894-0242. The PACER link that would enable you to access the Bankruptcy Court Records is https://ecf.caed.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/ShowIndex.pl.

There are four divisions of Bankruptcy Courts of Northern California in four counties. However, the records can be obtained from the same website https://ecf.cand.uscourts.gov/cand/http://www.peoplepublicrecords.org/index.html. The website for Southern California can be accessed through https://ecf.casd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/ShowIndex.pl.

Using PACER to Access Court Records

You need to subscribe to PACER in order to search information from the courts. You will be charged $0.08 per page result found. Once the outstanding amount crosses the cap of $10, an account statement is sent to you so that you clear your dues. However, you are not charged for registration. You can access court records from anywhere. All you will need are a computer with high-speed Internet access and a web browser that has Java script enabled.

Apart from PACER, there is NORS or National Open Records Search which provides you with all open records including Bankruptcy Court Records. Visit the website at http://www.nors.us/bankruptcyrecords/california/. Here, you can perform your search by county. You can download the record in almost no time.

There are many other commercial websites that also supply California Bankruptcy Court Records. They get the information from the government-owned sites, which let many agencies extract information from their database. Because of privacy laws, some information may not be accessible to the general public. It is recommended to opt for government database only as you can be rest assured about the authenticity of the information.