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Online Public Records

How to Search for People through Public Records

As we make our journey through life, we sign many documents of various types that become public records. These documents are filed typically by the counties in which transactions took place. In larger counties, there are smaller local regional branches that you can walk into and purchase copies of documents within the public records files. This can be any publicly recorded documents, such as real estate transactions, court records, marriage records, birth certificates, and death records. For a small fee, the county recorder can provide copies of certain records to the purchaser. Obtaining or purchasing the public records is not actually the most difficult part of searching for people, the hard part is finding out where the records are located.

What Type of Information Do I Need?

If you want to go down to the county recorders office and get a copy of the marriage record for John and Jane Smith you would first need to know in what county the license was filed. Without knowing that information, you would have a harder time obtaining the records. What county were they married in, and better yet, what city and the year? You will need to know Jane's maiden name as well, it's a little more difficult if you only know that Jane's last name is Smith because she married John. The ideal amount of information to have would be: Jane Doe and John Smith married on June 1, 1985 in Los Angeles County, in Norwalk. Their marriage records would be filed in Norwalk, at the County Recorders Office. If they were married in a smaller area, you could just go straight to the county office.

If you are looking for general information, then you can also perform a search online with much less information. That type of search will then return more information than you have, and with the added information you can find the answers you are looking for. So depending on where you live, who you are looking for, and where the records you are seeking are located, it is often cheaper to just get public records online.

What If I Don't Have All of the Information?

If you have part of the information, you can do research to find remaining pieces. Some of the reason why people pay a service to find people for them is that there is a lot of work that goes into pinpointing details. If you don't have the last name of the bride, you could try to run a search on John Smith, but his name is rather common, and possibly there are other records that are similar to his. Since you have Jane's first name, you might be a little closer to finding the record. If your dates aren't quite precise, or if you are lacking some of the details, you may be able to do some online people searching for answers. There are some online sites that may be able to help you, and if you aren't in or near the county recorders office, they can either mail or email the results of the search for you. The results of an online people search can sometimes produce not only the dates for you, but the maiden name as well. It is sometimes the cheapest and easiest way to obtain copies of public records, and you avoid the headache of having to run around unfamiliar counties for recorders offices.