In the United States, public records are a great reservoir of free information, but in the past they seemed quite remote and difficult to access for most people. Why? Because these billions of records used to be available only from county courts and state and federal agencies. Meaning, in the past, you had to physically take it to your local courthouse and search in person for the records you needed, whether they were real estate records, litigation records, corporate records, or whatever. What a headache.
The Internet has changed all that. Now you can sit at your office or home computer and access public records stored anywhere, in almost any courthouse or agency, in the country. Now, I am not arguing that all public records are currently available online. But many are, and those that aren’t can often be accessed with a phone call to the Recorder’s Office or County Clerk.
Before you get too excited though, take a look at the specific types of information we’re talking about.
Listed below are some of the types of government records you are entitled to see for free:
At the state level…
-Bankruptcy Records
-Federal Tax Links
-Criminal record
-Incarceration records
-Fictitious or assumed names
-Registrations of Limited Liability Companies
-Limited Company Records
-Brand, Trade Name
-State Tax Links
-Presentation of the Uniform Commercial Code
-Workers’ Compensation Records
-Boat records
-Sales Tax Records
-Vehicle and property records
-Death records
-Sex Offender Registries
-Marriage records
-divorce records
-Birth records
-Driver records
-Accident reports investigated by the state
-Some Types of Occupational Licenses
Public records available at the county level…
-Real Estate Appraiser and Fiscal Records
-County court records (both civil and criminal)
-Tax links (also available statewide)
-Uniform Commercial Code records (also available at the state level)
-Voter records (accessibility varies)
-Vital records (also available at the state level)
Available Federally…
-EDGAR Corporate Archives
-Federal Court Records
-Bankruptcy Records
-Military records
In addition, a large amount of demographic/economic/regulatory data is available through various federal agency websites.
These lists are not exhaustive, but simply indicate the amount and types of information that you can access for free online. So why would you want to? Some good reasons come to mind, such as: investment-related research; trademark/patent research; background checks on potential business partners; due diligence of real estate investments; determine the true marital status of a boyfriend or girlfriend; people searching; determine the financial viability of a potential partner; determine if a professional person’s license is up to date; find out if a provider has been sued; and many more.
Public Records Basics
It is very important to realize that there is a difference between public records and publicly available information. The term “public records” primarily refers to records maintained by government agencies that are freely available to the public, such as real estate records and bankruptcy records. On the other hand, your phone book contains “publicly available” information. In general, this is information that people have chosen to make publicly accessible, although it is not required. If you want your address and phone number to remain private, you can refuse to have it published in a phone book. But with public records information, you really don’t have a choice: the government makes it public, period.
Similarly, keep in mind that some information is always private, such as medical records and credit information. You can’t go to a government website and find out if someone has certain medical or psychiatric problems, and you can’t get a copy of your credit report without their written consent. Doing so violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which Uncle Sam, by the way, takes very seriously. Even if you find an online information broker that promises to provide you with someone’s private information, it’s still wise to pass on. Remember how much trouble Patricia Dunn, the president of Hewlett-Packard, got into a few years ago by hiring a private detective to investigate boardroom leaks, which involved looking into the personal lives of the board members of Hewlett-Packard? ? You don’t need that kind of trouble.
Therefore, it is very important to understand the difference between public and private information, and there is also another point to keep in mind: jurisdictions (counties and states) are not uniform in their regulations regarding access to records. For example, in some states you can access people’s driving records relatively easily (Colorado); in others you can’t (California). Some states consider criminal records to be public (Texas); others do not (Massachusetts). You must comply with the regulations of the jurisdiction where you are accessing the records.
Access to Public Records
As stated above, many jurisdictions have not yet computerized their public records, particularly smaller rural counties. So you can’t access their records online, but you can at least get their phone numbers online and call them. Often the county clerks will perform searches for you while you wait on the phone. A good source for county courthouse phone numbers is backgroundcheckgateway.com/statelist. Of course, you can probably just Google the county name and get the phone number as well.
By the way, there may be a small search fee and/or a small copying fee, but they will be modest – public record information is free unless you hire a professional document retrier to visit the agency or courthouse for access. to her for you. If you would like to discuss this possibility, please visit brbpub.com.
The following are brief instructions for accessing public records by broad categories:
Access to business records
Business records are largely concentrated in the office of the Secretary of State. For example, you may need to know if a particular company is incorporated or the date of incorporation, or who the officers and directors are. Or you may need information on a limited liability company, partnership or trade name, or sales tax records.
For other financial data from the Securities Exchange Commission and for information related to bankruptcies or patents and copyrights, you should look at the federal level.
For information related to mortgages, UCC, tax liens, and real property, you should focus on the county or local (city) level, most often the county level.
Access to court records
Access to criminal records presents a real challenge in the United States (although it’s easier here than almost anywhere else in the world).
On the one hand, governments want to give you criminal record information so you can avoid hiring or doing business with criminals; on the other hand, they don’t want to give you a criminal record because then you won’t be hiring or doing business with ex-convicts, who will then be motivated to commit more crimes in order to survive.
So it seems they compromise by making information difficult to obtain (or more likely, bureaucracy dictates that the process cannot be simplified and made reasonably efficient). Thus, we found that there is no single national repository for criminal records in the US, except for the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, which is available only to law enforcement organizations. Criminal record information is kept on a strictly fragmentary and jurisdictional basis. So, if your subject resides in Colorado, he/she can run a statewide criminal history search there, and he/she may come out clean, but is in fact a convicted felon in Indiana. Unless he also checks out Indiana, he’ll never know this.
As a result, I believe this is a type of public records search best left to the professionals. You cannot realistically check all states. And for that matter, most states won’t give you the information anyway, so you’ll have to check at the county level. For criminal records search, I recommend that you hire an information professional who specializes in this type of search, such as Intelius or USSearch.com.
What about civil litigation? This can get complicated, because the cases may fall under county, state, or federal law. And of course the municipalities also have courts.
If you are looking for federal cases, most of which are tried in US district courts, start with the US Case/Parts Index. This is a national index for district courts, bankruptcies, and US Appeals If, using this index, you determine that your subject is involved in federal litigation, you may be able to access file information online using PACER (as long as the litigation is current or recent). Older case documents are held in various federal courts or transferred to the Federal Records Center.
Statewide, online search is largely limited to court docket sheets (case histories). Today, many state courts provide Internet access to their dockets. For detailed state-by-state availability information, visit brbpub.com or check Public Records Online, published by Facts on Demand Press.
Access to Marriage/Divorce Records:
Our company, Washington Research Associates, Inc., has developed an e-book (free to download) that lists virtually every online source for researching a person’s marital status. You can download it at weddingdivorcerecords.com.
Access to registry office records
Your county or city recorder’s office has extraordinary and complete information on almost all real estate in the county (sale prices, mortgages, liens, property descriptions, improvements, etc.) and all of this is public information. Registry office data is now widely available on the Internet. A good source is netronline.com. By the way, for the latest news about your county or any county of interest, try visiting naco.org.
How to locate US government portals
Washington Research Associates has also developed an extremely extensive list of the best government portals for accessing public records and other types of publicly available information.
