📂 Understanding Public Records

Public records are documents, files, and data maintained by government agencies that are legally available for public inspection. They are created and preserved because governments are required by law — through state and federal freedom of information acts, open records laws, and sunshine statutes — to operate transparently. Public records are the bedrock of professional skip tracing, asset searches, background investigations, and virtually every other form of legitimate investigative work in the United States. 📂

The scope of public records is enormous. Every time someone buys or sells property, the transaction is recorded by the county recorder. Every time someone files a lawsuit, the complaint becomes a court record. Every time someone forms a business, the Secretary of State creates a filing. Every time someone registers to vote, a voter registration record is created. Every time someone obtains a professional license, that license is publicly recorded. Collectively, these billions of individual records create a detailed, government-verified mosaic of where people live, what they own, who they associate with, what businesses they operate, and what legal history they carry.

For skip tracing and investigation professionals, public records are invaluable because they are: authoritative — government-sourced and verified through official processes; legally accessible — available without the permissible purpose requirements that restrict consumer reports or the privacy protections that shield financial institution records; comprehensive — covering virtually every aspect of a person’s civic, financial, and legal life; and historically rich — many jurisdictions maintain records going back decades or even centuries, enabling historical tracing of addresses, assets, and associations.

Court records are among the most valuable public records for skip tracing and investigation because they reveal legal history, financial disputes, criminal conduct, family relationships, and current addresses — all verified through official court processes. ⚖️

📋 Civil Court Records

Civil court records document lawsuits, judgments, liens, collections, contract disputes, personal injury claims, and every other non-criminal legal proceeding. For judgment collection, civil records reveal whether the debtor has been sued by others (indicating a pattern of non-payment), whether they have judgments against them from other creditors (potential priority issues), whether they have filed lawsuits themselves (potential assets in the form of pending claims), and their addresses as recorded in court filings (often more current than other sources). Civil records from post-judgment discovery proceedings, debtor examinations, and enforcement actions provide even more detailed financial information about judgment debtors.

👮 Criminal Court Records

Criminal records are maintained at the county, state, and federal levels. They include arrest records, charging documents, trial records, conviction records, sentencing information, and probation or parole records. For background investigations, criminal records are essential — they reveal convictions, pending charges, and in some cases, current addresses through probation and parole records. For skip tracing, criminal records provide associated addresses, booking photographs, and identifying information. A background check typically includes criminal record searches at multiple jurisdictional levels. Note that access to some criminal records (sealed records, juvenile records, expunged records) is restricted.

👪 Family Court Records

Marriage records, divorce records, child custody filings, and domestic relations court records reveal family relationships, name changes, asset divisions, and current addresses. Divorce records are particularly valuable for asset searches because they often include detailed financial disclosures — property ownership, bank account information, income, debts, and retirement accounts — that the parties were required to disclose under oath. For skip tracers trying to find someone who changed their name through marriage or divorce, family court records are indispensable. Marriage records connect maiden names to married names, and divorce records often reveal post-divorce addresses and name reversions.

🏦 Bankruptcy Court Records

Federal bankruptcy filings are public records accessible through the PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) system. Bankruptcy records are gold mines of financial information: they include detailed schedules listing all assets (real property, vehicles, bank accounts, investments, personal property), all debts (creditors, amounts, types), income history, expense budgets, and tax returns. For judgment creditors, a debtor’s bankruptcy filing provides a comprehensive snapshot of their financial picture — often more detailed than anything obtainable through other investigative methods. For skip tracing, bankruptcy filings provide current addresses and employment information verified under penalty of perjury.

Property records are maintained by county recorder offices, county assessor offices, and in some states, by state-level land registry systems. They are among the most consistently maintained and accessible public records in the country — and they are critically important for both skip tracing and asset identification. 🏠

📜 Deed Records (County Recorder)

Every property transfer is documented through a deed recorded at the county recorder’s office. Deed records reveal: current property owners, transfer dates and prices, grantor and grantee information (who sold and who bought), trust names when property is held in trust, and legal descriptions of the property. For real property asset searches, deed records are the primary source for identifying what real estate a person owns. For skip tracing, deed records provide addresses associated with property ownership — a person may not live at the property they own, but ownership records still provide valuable leads for location.

💰 Assessor Records (County Assessor)

County assessors maintain records of property valuations for tax purposes. Assessor records provide: assessed value, owner name and mailing address (which may differ from the property address), property characteristics (size, bedrooms, year built), and tax payment history. The mailing address in assessor records is particularly valuable for skip tracing — if a property owner does not live at the property (for example, a landlord), the mailing address in assessor records indicates where they actually receive mail. This is how professional skip tracers find out if someone owns property and determine where property owners can be reached.

📋 Mortgage and Lien Records

Mortgage recordings, deeds of trust, mechanic’s liens, tax liens, and judgment liens are all recorded as encumbrances against real property. These records reveal: the amount of existing mortgages (which helps calculate equity for levy and execution purposes), the lender name, recording dates, and the property owner’s signed acknowledgment (which includes their current address at the time of signing). For judgment creditors evaluating whether to lien a debtor’s property, mortgage records reveal how much equity exists after existing encumbrances.

🔄 Transfer History

By tracing the chain of title through deed records, investigators can identify suspicious transfer patterns. If a judgment debtor recently transferred property to a family member, a newly formed LLC, or a trust — particularly after a judgment was entered — that transfer may be a fraudulent conveyance that can be reversed by the court. Transfer history also reveals previous addresses where the person lived (through past deeds where they were the grantee) and associated individuals who participated in property transactions.

Every state’s Secretary of State (or equivalent agency) maintains records of business entities formed or registered to operate in that state. These records are publicly accessible and provide critical information for business asset searches, pre-litigation investigation, alter ego analysis, and debtor location. 🏢

• 📋 Entity formation records. LLCs, corporations, limited partnerships, and other entity types are documented at the Secretary of State with formation dates, entity types, registered agent names and addresses, principal office addresses, and officer/member names. For collecting judgments against businesses, formation records identify who owns and controls the entity — critical information for veil-piercing claims.
• 👤 Officer and agent information. Most states require entities to identify their officers, directors, managers, or members in annual filings. This information connects individuals to businesses and businesses to individuals. For skip tracing, discovering that a debtor is the registered agent or officer of an entity provides a service address. For asset searches, discovering entities connected to the debtor reveals potential business assets.
• 📊 Annual reports. Most states require entities to file annual or biennial reports updating their officer information, registered agent, and principal office address. These annual filings provide a time-series of the entity’s leadership and location — useful for tracking changes that might indicate asset transfers or asset concealment.
• 📍 DBA / Fictitious Business Name filings. Individuals and entities operating under names other than their legal name must file DBA (Doing Business As) or fictitious business name statements, usually at the county level. DBA filings connect individuals to business names and provide addresses. For skip tracing, discovering that a debtor filed a DBA provides their current business address and potentially their operating location.

Our business entity search searches Secretary of State records across all 50 states to identify every entity connected to a subject — not just entities in the state where they reside, but entities formed or registered anywhere in the country. This nationwide scope catches debtors who form entities in Delaware, Nevada, or Wyoming while operating in their home state — a common asset-protection tactic that nationwide searching defeats.

Vital records document the fundamental life events that define legal identity: birth, death, marriage, and divorce. Access to vital records varies significantly by state — some states make certain vital records freely available while others restrict access to the subject, immediate family members, or parties with a direct legal interest. 📋

• 👶 Birth records. Birth certificates confirm legal name at birth, date and place of birth, and parents’ names. Access is typically restricted to the subject, parents, and authorized legal representatives. Birth records are most relevant for identity verification and establishing family connections.
• 💀 Death records. Death certificates and death indexes are important for handling judgment debtor deaths, inheritance tracing, and confirming whether a person is deceased. The Social Security Death Index (SSDI) is a publicly accessible database of death records reported to the Social Security Administration. For finding lost family members and adoption searches, death records may be needed to determine if the person being sought is still living.
• 💍 Marriage records. Marriage license records connect individuals to spouses, provide maiden names, and include addresses at the time of marriage. Marriage records are publicly accessible in most states and are critical for tracing name changes. For skip tracing, a marriage record connects a subject to their spouse — and the spouse’s address may lead to the subject.
• 📋 Divorce records. Divorce decrees are court records that document the dissolution of marriage, property division, name changes, custody arrangements, and financial disclosures. As discussed under court records, divorce filings often contain the most detailed financial information available about an individual outside of bankruptcy proceedings.

State professional licensing boards maintain records of every individual licensed to practice a regulated profession — attorneys, physicians, nurses, real estate agents, contractors, accountants, engineers, teachers, and dozens of other professions. These records are publicly accessible and provide verified, current information that is extremely valuable for skip tracing and investigation. 📜

🔑 What licensing records reveal. Professional license records typically include: the licensee’s full legal name, license number and type, license status (active, inactive, expired, revoked, suspended), address of record (which licensees are required to keep current), employer information (for many license types), education and training history, and disciplinary history. For skip tracing, the address of record on a professional license is often one of the most current addresses available — because failure to maintain a current address with the licensing board can result in license suspension or revocation, licensed professionals have strong incentive to keep this address updated.

👔 Employment verification through licensing. Many professional licenses are tied to specific employers — a real estate agent’s license shows their broker, a physician’s license may show their hospital affiliation, an attorney’s license shows their bar registration address. This information is invaluable for employment verification and for finding employers for wage garnishment. If you know a debtor is a licensed professional, their licensing board record likely reveals their current employer — information that makes wage garnishment straightforward.

📋 Contractor and business licensing. Contractors, businesses, and other commercially licensed entities maintain licenses with state and local agencies. These records reveal business addresses, insurance information, bond details, and owner names. For investigating businesses before suing, contractor licensing records confirm whether a business is properly licensed and insured — and provide contact information for service and investigation.

While detailed financial information like bank account balances is protected by privacy laws like the GLBA, several categories of financially relevant information are maintained as public records. These records provide significant insight into a person’s financial position without accessing restricted private financial data. 💰

📋 UCC Filings (Uniform Commercial Code)

UCC filings are recorded at the Secretary of State level and document secured interests in personal property — equipment, inventory, accounts receivable, vehicles, and other non-real-estate assets. When a lender makes a secured loan (like a business equipment loan), they file a UCC financing statement identifying the debtor, the secured party, and the collateral. For asset searches, UCC filings reveal what significant personal property assets the debtor owns (the collateral described in the filing) and what debts are secured by those assets. For pre-litigation investigation, UCC filings show whether a business’s assets are already pledged as collateral to existing lenders.

🏛️ Tax Lien Records

Federal and state tax liens are recorded as public records — typically at both the county recorder and the Secretary of State (for federal tax liens). Tax lien records reveal that the person or business owes back taxes, the amount owed, and when the lien was filed. For judgment creditors, existing tax liens create priority issues — the government’s lien may take priority over your judgment lien. For assessing whether a debtor is hiding assets, the absence of assets despite significant income (as evidenced by large tax liabilities) suggests asset concealment.

⚖️ Judgment Records

Judgments entered by courts are public records that reveal the debtor’s name and address, the creditor’s identity, the judgment amount, and the date entered. Judgment records from other creditors help you assess the debtor’s overall financial picture and understand whether multiple creditors are competing for the same assets. They also help determine judgment renewal status and calculate judgment interest that may be accruing.

📊 Bankruptcy Records

Federal bankruptcy filings through the PACER system provide comprehensive financial disclosure — all assets, all debts, income, expenses, and recent transactions. Bankruptcy records are the most detailed financial public records available on any individual. As discussed under court records, these filings provide a complete snapshot of the debtor’s financial life at the time of filing.

🗳️ Voter Registration Records

Voter registration records are maintained by state election offices and typically include: the voter’s full name, residential address, date of birth, party affiliation, and voting history (whether they voted in specific elections, not how they voted). Voter registration records are valuable for skip tracing because voters are required to register at their current residential address, and registration updates are often more current than other address sources. However, some states allow voters to opt out of public disclosure, and address confidentiality programs in many states restrict access to voter records for domestic violence victims and other protected individuals.

🚗 Motor Vehicle Records

As detailed in our DPPA guide, motor vehicle records are maintained by state DMVs and contain current addresses, physical descriptions, and vehicle registration information. While access is restricted to DPPA-permissible purposes, authorized users with legitimate needs — legal proceedings, licensed investigation, insurance activities — can access DMV data for skip tracing and vehicle identification purposes.

📬 USPS Address Changes

The National Change of Address (NCOA) database maintained by the U.S. Postal Service tracks address changes filed by individuals and businesses when they move. While direct access to NCOA data is restricted to licensed NCOA users, the address change information flows into many commercial databases that professional skip tracing services access. NCOA data is one of the most timely sources of address updates — people who avoid updating other records often still file mail forwarding to ensure they receive their mail at their new address.

✈️ FAA Records

The Federal Aviation Administration maintains public records of aircraft registrations, pilot certifications, and mechanic certifications. For high-value asset searches, FAA records can identify aircraft ownership — a significant asset that debtors sometimes fail to disclose or attempt to conceal. Aircraft registrations include the owner’s name and address, making them both an asset identification tool and a skip tracing resource.

🚢 USCG Vessel Records

The United States Coast Guard maintains records of documented vessels (boats over a certain size). Like aircraft registrations, vessel documentation reveals ownership and provides current addresses for vessel owners. For comprehensive asset searches, checking both FAA and USCG databases ensures that high-value mobile assets are not overlooked.

The real power of public records lies not in any single record, but in the ability to cross-reference multiple record types to build a comprehensive picture of a person’s location, assets, associations, and history. This is what separates professional skip tracing and investigation from amateur searches — the systematic aggregation and analysis of information from dozens of sources. 🔍

🚫 What Public Records Don’t Include

Understanding the limits of public records is as important as understanding their scope. Public records do not include: bank account balances or transaction history (protected by the GLBA), credit reports or credit scores (regulated by the FCRA), tax returns (federally protected), medical records (protected by HIPAA), sealed court records, juvenile records, expunged criminal records, Social Security records, and private communications. When these types of information are needed, they must be obtained through proper legal channels — debtor examinations, post-judgment discovery, court-authorized subpoenas, or other legal process tools.

Public records can be accessed through several channels, each with different advantages for different purposes: 🖥️

• 🌐 Government websites. Most counties, states, and federal agencies maintain online portals for public records access. County recorder websites provide property records, state Secretary of State websites provide business filings, PACER provides federal court records, and state court websites provide state court records. Online access is typically free or low-cost, but searching multiple jurisdictions individually is extremely time-consuming.
• 🏛️ In-person courthouse visits. Some records — particularly older records not yet digitized, sealed records opened by court order, and records in jurisdictions without online access — require in-person visits to courthouses, recorder offices, or government agencies. This is the most time-intensive access method but sometimes the only option.
• 🗃️ Commercial aggregated databases. Professional skip tracing and investigation services access commercial databases that aggregate public records from thousands of jurisdictions into searchable, cross-referenced systems. These databases — which our skip tracing services and asset search services rely on — provide nationwide coverage in a single search rather than requiring jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction queries. This aggregation is what makes professional searches dramatically more efficient and comprehensive than DIY public records searching.
• 📋 FOIA and open records requests. For records not readily available online or in person, Freedom of Information Act (federal) and state open records law requests can compel government agencies to provide access to public records. Processing times vary from days to months, and agencies may charge reasonable fees for search and duplication. FOIA requests are most useful for records held by specific agencies that don’t routinely publish records online.

The fundamental challenge with public records research is not that the records are hard to find — it is that they are distributed across thousands of different jurisdictions, each with their own systems, formats, access methods, and fees. A person who owns property in three counties, has court records in two states, and operates a business registered in a fourth state would require searches across at least six different jurisdictions to build a complete picture. This is exactly why professional skip tracing services exist — they maintain access to aggregated systems that search thousands of jurisdictions simultaneously, delivering comprehensive results in 24 hours or less rather than the weeks or months it would take to search each jurisdiction individually.