Free San Francisco Divorce Records Lookup

More often than not, if you want to obtain a divorce record, you can get it from a Department of Public Health, the county clerk’s office and the Superior Court. However, in San Francisco County, California, San Francisco Divorce Records can only be obtained from the Superior Court. The court has a Public Viewing Room where people can check if the record they want to obtain is available or not.

The Superior court started maintaining records of divorce cases that occurred from 1906 up to present day. Then in 1987, the court started to run its own database where they upload soft copies of the records. Records that were recorded before 1987 are retrieved using a microfilm.

A divorce record contains many vital pieces of information. It contains the personal details of the couple and the terms and agreement of the divorce case. The general public is allowed to place a request for the records because they are deemed as part of the public domain. A person may request his/her own records. It is also possible to gain full access to someone else’s records if you are an immediate relative of the owners, a lawyer of either of the couple, a member of the law enforcement agency that has consent of both owner and court, and the presiding judge. If you are not any of the aforementioned, you can only access the basic details of the divorce case, which are enough to verify the validity of a divorce. Confidential details such as grounds for divorce and terms and agreement are disclosed to the public in order to protect the privacy of the parties involved.

In order to start a search, you must know the case number. If you do not know this, you can ask the court to retrieve it, for a certain fee. To get the case number, you must at least know the full names of either the male or female owner of the record. Supplying additional information also helps because it narrows down the search category which consequently, provided all information are correct and up to date, increases the chances of locating the exact record.

Once you have the case number, secure a request form for divorce records at the court or download it from their official website. Supply all the required information such as the name of the couple, the date of divorce, and the place where it was finalized, and others. Submit the completed form along with other requirements such as your proof of identification, your contact information, and a fee of $15 per copy. Fees are non-refundable regardless of search outcome. Expected return period is at least 10 business days from the time request is accepted but sometimes it takes a lot longer to process.

You can also get a San Francisco County Divorce Decree from non-government websites that are in the business of maintaining and providing divorce records to the public. Due to the vast amount of information available online, there have emerged websites that have the consent of the court and those that are fake ones. Before obtaining or using any information from a certain source, check their background first and see if they have a good track record.