County Court Records: Available to the Public
County courts are a division of the courts of the state. These are different from federal courts and are often broken down into different types of courts, each dealing with a specific area of legal needs. There are probate courts, family courts and state superior court. The superior court is the highest court in the state and local affairs will usually only make their way there on appeal. The state Supreme Court only gets involved to settle disputes arising from the legality of judgments and the validity of the law governing the other courts in the state.
County court records is a general term used to describe all court records in a particular county, including family, civil, criminal and probate court records. The vast majority of these courts fall into the public sphere and, by law, the records are to be made public for the betterment and continued informing of society and the public as a whole.
County court records provide a vast amount of information to the public and that information is used in a variety of ways. There are also numerous ways to obtain this information.
County court records can be used to inform the public of cases of concern to them. This may be something as simple as a zoning violation or as complex as a will being proven and acted upon. The openness and publicity of these records is a testament to the amount of information available to citizens in each state. The information contained in county court records is often of a minor nature, while heinous crimes and cases concerning large sums of money are usually passed on to the state courts with general jurisdiction, rather than remaining in courts with limited jurisdiction. County courts are courts with limited jurisdiction, meaning that they are usually used for settling local disputes of a relatively mild nature.
County court records often are primarily concerned with minor crime, divorce and marriage, community development and zoning and probate items such as will and insurance policy disbursements. County court records can be accessed through a number of different means. They are available directly at the county courthouse for viewing and copying; through the mail and over the Internet. Many cities and states have begun putting their public county court records online so that they can be more easily found, read, distributed and understood.