California Courthouse Records

If you are looking for case records from a California courthouse, you need be clear about precisely what kind of records you are looking for. These could be one of four types of court records.

Adoption Records

These records would include the names of any adopted child or children, natural parents, and adopting parents. The records contain good information, but can be opened only when there is an order from the court for some “shown good cause”, and this is the case only when the adopted person makes the appeal. Genealogy research does not qualify as a “good cause”.

Divorce Records

These records normally provide names of both the spouses, names of children (if any), date and location of the marriage, dates of birth of both the spouses, and the country or state of their birth. To request these records, you will need to include the names of the two spouses, approximate year of the divorce, and your relationship to the couple. To get a copy of a divorce record, you need to write to the court of the county where the divorce was granted.

Naturalization Records

Each record normally has the citizenship petition with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), a petition with the local court clerk, and a Certificate of Naturalization. The National Archives has many of these records. You can also get naturalization records from the INS. For this, you will need to write to your local INS office and ask for a copy of the form G-641. Early naturalization records will be in court records where such naturalization happened.

Probate records

These are created at the time of an individual's death, and are meant to establish the legality of a will. You can access the will in records of probate to find the assets owned by a deceased person. From here you can also find the name of a survivor and his or her relationship to the deceased person.

Court records are often requested by applicants to find out whether a person has a criminal background or not. So, the court record that you ask for may also include this information.

Information in the Records:

•    Full name 

•    Age, sex and other details 

•    Current and past telephone numbers and also the addresses 

•    Marriage records 

•    Court, police, arrest and also criminal records 

•    Records from army, military and the navy 

•    Business and also property records 

•    Other relevant documentation

What are Case Files?

A case file contains correspondence, evidence, depositions, testimony and other documents that are relevant to a case. Finding a case file normally requires you to obtain a case file number from the index, docket, or minutes of the case.

Right up until the 1950s, it was pretty tough for most people to gain access to court records, assuming the records were made and kept reasonably organized. One hurdle was crossed when the U.S. Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act in 1960, and it became your right as a U.S. citizen to have access to any case record in any state.

Before the online era, records were in what today we call ‘hard copy’ – written, typed or printed on paper. To afford the books with the case records, you had to be a lawyer to make it worth your money.

Since the Freedom Information Act, it has been your right as a citizen to have access to any case record in any state. Even that didn’t help because recordkeeping was still practiced on paper, and records were kept only in the courthouses. Having the right didn’t necessarily make it easier to enforce it. 

Things improved when public records were converted from paper to digital files, although they still had to be copied to disk or printed out, then mailed or faxed. The sea of change came with the Internet.

How to Find Courthouse Records

Since these records are maintained at the courthouse, the easiest way is to approach the clerk for the records you need. You might need to wait in a long queue, though alternatively you can call and ask for the records. Once your request is placed, your records will be sent to you for a fee. Now you can also place your request on the Internet through http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/pubaccess.htm.