How to Obtain Ohio Divorce Records

As the heartland state, Ohio is highly representative of US states as a whole in how it handles Ohio divorce records. Ohio’s system of recordkeeping goes pretty far back in time – the state holds vital records dating earlier than 1851. Like the majority of states in the country though, it has not made much headway about making the records easily accessible to the public. If you need to access these records, you can legally do so and ask for your copy by submitting a proper request.

Since the Ohio divorce records must all be maintained, the database is naturally extensive. There are a lot of divorce cases and the database of records is becoming bigger with every passing year.

Record Maintenance in Ohio

The State of Ohio has a centralized system of keeping vital records, except for divorce. This means that though the actual divorce might have happened in some county, all such records are maintained at one central pool. When you want to find this information, you need to know that same-day service may be available to walk-in customers for birth certificates, but this is not the case with Ohio divorce records.

If you are looking for Ohio divorce records, here is how the system works in the state:

Ohio divorce records since 1949 are held at the Court of Common Pleas in each Ohio county, and then they are forwarded to the central pool as mentioned before. They are open to verification. When you submit a request for a record however, you have to send it to the Ohio Department of Health, Vital Statistics, P.O. Box 15098, 225 Neilston Street, Columbus, Ohio 43216. They are open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and you can also call (614) 466-2531.

Certified copies of Ohio divorce records will not be available from this office though. Your request, like others to this central repository of Ohio divorce records, will then be forwarded to the appropriate county for processing.

How Much Will This Cost You?

There are two issues to address here. The first issue is that the costs vary from one county to another, and also from one search to another. This is because individual searches may require more or fewer inputs and be more or less time-consuming. It is thus not possible to determine the cost in advance, because they will vary from case to case.

For example, if you can provide a lot of information about the person on whom you want the search to be conducted such as the name, the city, county, date of divorce etc., then you can expect to pay a lower fee. On the other hand, if you have less information, if you are not sure of the date and perhaps even the year, then the search needs to span more years. In such cases, the fee will go up.

The second issue is that for each certified copy of Ohio divorce records, you will need to send $16.50 by check or money order that is payable to the ‘Treasurer, State of Ohio’ at the P.O. Box referenced above.

You can normally expect to receive your information about Ohio divorce records in about 2 to 3 weeks from the day the request reaches the county office. However, it might take a little bit longer because the office is normally under-staffed. So you should remember this and practice patience.

For Ohio divorce records prior to 1949, you can approach each county’s Court of Common Pleas. Prior to 1851, Ohio divorce records were to be found either at the state’s Supreme Court, the Chancery Court or the Common Pleas Court. For general information about older Ohio divorce records, you can also try the Ohio Historical Society, Archives/Library Reference Questions, 1982 Velma Avenue, Columbus, OH 43211, or call at (614) 297-2510.