SEARCH COURT RECORDS
If the subject in your people search has attended a public college, including community colleges and public universities, you have a strong source of information for accessing this kind of state records. As public institutions, these state agencies will have state records on their students listed in the Student Directory Information, which will have the student’s name, current address and contact information, birth date, major, dates of attendance, enrollment status, and any degrees awarded, and other school-related activities.
You will need to call the registrar’s office at the particular state institution to find out the procedure for obtaining this public information. And if your people search yields positive results, you may be able to obtain more information through filing a Freedom of Information Act with the institution.
Child support, or the lack-there-of, has become a big concern for the states, which can be a good source of state records for you in your people search. Basically, any parent who neglects to pay child support will have a lien or past-due judgment against him or her and will be red flagged in the state’s legal system, and if bad enough, the information will reach national and be in the federal system.
If your subject owes back child support in a particular state, contact the state’s child support enforcement program to access those state records. All fifty states run a child support enforcement program, which is usually under the jurisdiction of the department of human services, the department of revenue, or the State Attorney General’s Office. Their main duties include locating non-custodial parents, establishing paternity, establishing support orders, collecting support payments, and provide service for non-custodial parents. Give them a try. They may be able to give you a solid lead on your people search.
If the subject in you people search has been involved in the state court system in any way, such as a lawsuit that went to the state level, or perhaps the person has been incarcerated in the particular state’s prison system, then you will find very good information in the particular state’s courts and particular state’s correction system, all are available through the public records. You may be required to go there in person to look up the public records yourself, as most state offices do not provide reference service. That said, it is still worth a shot to give them a call.
Lastly, states records will also have business records, such as a company that was incorporated by such and such person(s) in the particular state. If the subject of your people search has owned a business, there may be a chance that there is a public record of this business in the state documents. Also there may be records of filings from this business, such as uniform commercial code filings or large financial transactions concerning the business. And if the business went bankrupt or the person in your people search went bankrupt, there is also a public record of that in the particular state’s documents.
