Keep Track Of The Number Of California Divorce Records

To access California Divorce Records, request them at the county Superior Court where they are filed. The Superior courts are also the ones assigned to hand out certified copies of the files to the people who ask for them. The files are taken care of by the Office of Vital Statistics of the California Department of Health. Only divorce files from 1962 to 1984 are available at the office. 

Requests can be made by going personally to the county Superior Courts, or through mail. Each certified copy costs $13 and are only payable by check or money order. You can also choose for the records to be faxed but pay an extra $7. You need to provide basic personal information of the spouses such as names, birthday of both spouses, county where the divorce occurred, and date of divorce. In case the date is unknown, indicate a range of possible years where it might have occurred. 

Complete a request form to file a request. Also include a sworn statement together with the request form. Get the sworn statement notarized if you are making your request by mail. Requests without a sworn statement will not be accepted.  Payments made to the particular county court will not be refunded.

Divorce files are considered as public records under the definition of the Freedom of Information Act. The files can be utilized for financial to personal purposes. They are restricted only to those names found in the files, legal delegates, or any person or agency authorized by the law. The records are allowed to be sealed if the couple wishes to do so. This is usually done to preserve their right to privacy. 

All states will recognize divorce granted from other states and all states impose minimum time for residence before qualifying for application of divorce. A divorce decree will not be granted unless all legal issues pertaining to the divorce are settled. Legal issues include child support guidelines, child support division, deductions of alimony, health insurance coverage, property divisions, and more. 

If you get the divorce documents from public offices, then you will have to deal with the long period of time it takes the complete the process. In California, it averages about 15 to 20 weeks for a request to be completed. If you are in urgent need to get the documents, then go with commercial record providers. They maybe a bit more expensive but they can spare you from the long wait. There are two kinds of providers, the free-of-charge and the fee-based. A fee-based site is a better option because they have the ability to provide a more organized and complete public divorce records. They take advantage of available information from both public and private resources so they can gather more data and sort out which ones are important to be included in the documents.