Where New York Keeps the Records That Locate a Person
A locate usually means three different offices: one for deeds, one for the trial court file, one for the judgment docket. New York hands all three to the same person. County Law section 525 makes the county clerk the register for recorded land documents, the clerk of the supreme court, and the keeper of the judgment and lien dockets, and the State Constitution states the second of those in a line of its own. That is not trivia. It means a New York search that arrives at the right counter arrives at three answers at once, and a search aimed at the wrong county has missed all three together. We locate people and research recorded property across all sixty-two counties, under a permissible purpose, out of public records and data licensed to us lawfully. This is a public-records research desk.
The Short Version
New York skip tracing runs through the county clerk by statute. The same elected officer records the deed, clerks the supreme court and keeps the judgment and lien docket, so one office dates a person against land, litigation and debt. The online civil index reaches all sixty-two counties, but thirteen carry history back to the 1970s and 1980s while the other forty-nine begin in 2002. Beneath the supreme court sit the town and village Justice Courts, which the online index does not carry and which hold the freshest filed addresses. We work all of it under a permissible purpose. We are not a consumer reporting agency. Read this page as general information, not as legal advice.
The County Clerk Is Three Offices Wearing One Hat
Land, litigation and judgments, filed by the same elected officer.
New York is unusual in how little it splits up. Pennsylvania divides a county’s paperwork across a prothonotary, a clerk of courts, a register of wills and a recorder of deeds. Mississippi puts land with a chancery clerk. Connecticut abolished county government altogether and left land records with town clerks. New York went the other way and consolidated, and it wrote that consolidation into three separate places in its own law.
The Constitution makes the county clerk a court clerk
The relevant sentence is short enough to quote whole. Article VI of the New York Constitution, at section 6, subdivision (e), provides that “the clerks of the several counties shall be clerks of the supreme court, with such powers and duties as shall be prescribed by law.” There is no separately elected clerk of court in New York. The officer who takes your deed is the officer whose office holds the civil case file.
County Law section 525 adds the other two roles
The statute filling in that constitutional grant is County Law section 525, and its first subdivision is worth reading literally: the county clerk “shall perform the duties prescribed by law as register, and be the clerk of the supreme court and clerk of the county court within his county.” Three roles, one sentence. Its second subdivision then makes the same officer responsible, at county expense, for the “judgment and lien dockets and books for the indexing of the same.” So the judgment index is not some separate agency’s product. It sits alongside the land records and the case files, maintained by the same staff.
Real Property Law section 291 sends the deed to the same door
For recorded land documents the operative provision is Real Property Law section 291, under which a conveyance “may be recorded in the office of the clerk of the county where such real property is situated, and such county clerk or city registrar where applicable shall, upon the request of any party, on tender of the lawful fees therefor, record the same in said office.” Notice the phrase “or city registrar where applicable.” The statute concedes in five words that a small number of places run a registrar instead, which is a New York City arrangement rather than a statewide one; our New York City records coverage takes that ground and this page deliberately does not repeat it.
What the consolidation is worth to a search
Three practical consequences follow, and between them they are why we open every New York file at a county rather than at a database.
- One county yields three dated artifacts. A deed carries a recording date. A civil file carries a filing date. A docketed judgment carries a docketing date. Read together they describe a sequence, and a sequence tells you far more than any single address.
- A wrong county costs all three at once. Nothing catches a search aimed at the wrong place, because the thing that would have caught it is the separate court clerk New York does not have.
- Disagreement among the three is information. Where a deed says one town and a civil filing from the following year says another, that gap is the move you were looking for rather than an error to reconcile away.
None of this requires anything the public cannot see. It requires knowing the counter exists and what sits behind it, which is the part that general guidance on how to locate a missing person tends to leave out.
Sixty-Two Counties, Very Different Weather
Where the people are, and where the record footprint thins.
A statewide page owes you more than the number sixty-two. Population in New York is concentrated to a degree that changes how a search should be sequenced, and it is concentrated in a shape that does not match the way people talk about the state.
The counties carrying the weight
Outside the five boroughs, the heaviest counties sit on Long Island and immediately north of the city. Suffolk County holds 1,535,909 people and Nassau County 1,392,438, which is close to three million people between them. Westchester County holds 1,006,447. Then the map jumps west across three hundred miles of comparatively empty ground to Erie County and its 950,602, which is Buffalo and its suburbs. Those four are where a suburban or exurban New York locate usually lands, and each keeps a clerk’s office with its own indexing conventions online.
West and north of Albany the arithmetic changes completely. Monroe County is Rochester, Onondaga County is Syracuse, Albany County is the capital, and each anchors a metropolitan area with a workable records footprint. Past those anchors the state becomes genuinely rural: the Southern Tier along the Pennsylvania border, the Mohawk Valley, the Tug Hill plateau, the Adirondack counties, and the North Country running up to the St. Lawrence and the Canadian border. We are deliberately not printing population figures for those counties. The only figures we have verified are the four above, and a number invented for a web page outlives its accuracy by years.
What thin population actually does to a locate
The usual claim is that rural records are “sparse.” That is imprecise, and being exact about it matters, because the practical effect is not the one people expect.
Rural New York counties do not hold fewer records per person. They hold fewer records online, and the intervals between the events that generate a record are longer. Someone in Hamilton or Schoharie County may keep the same house for thirty years, never be sued, never record a second deed, and never appear in a court index at all. The footprint is not thin because the county is small. It is thin because nothing has happened to that person that the county was obliged to write down. The answer is not more searching. It is searching a different layer, which is where the Justice Courts below come in, and it is why a rural New York file often turns on a small claim or a traffic matter rather than on anything at the courthouse.
The other direction a trail runs
New York also loses residents to other states steadily enough that a New York origin is a starting point rather than a destination. When a trail crosses a state line we follow it into that state’s own recording and court structure rather than assuming a national database carries it, and when it stays inside New York but crosses a county line we begin the clerk sequence again in the new county. The general version of that discipline is set out in our guide to finding someone in New York. The part specific to this page is that the county boundary, not the town boundary, is what resets the work.
The State Case Index, and the Four Things It Omits
What eCourts covers, and where the omissions actually bite.
The Unified Court System publishes a suite of public case-search applications under the name eCourts. The applications listed there are WebCivil Local, WebCivil Supreme, WebCriminal, WebFamily and WebSurrogate. WebCivil Supreme matters most for a locate, because supreme court in New York is the trial court of general jurisdiction rather than the highest court, and it is where the money cases are. The application runs on the courts’ iapps service; we quote its own published frequently-asked-questions page below and cite it by name rather than linking it, because that host sits outside the narrow set of domains this site links out to.
Coverage, and where the county count on this page came from
The FAQ states that WebCivil Supreme “contains cases from the Civil Supreme Courts in all 62 counties of New York State,” then lists every one of them by name, from Albany through Yates. We counted the enumerated list rather than repeating a figure from somewhere else, and it comes to sixty-two. That is the source of the county number used on this page, and it is checkable in one place.
Omission one: the index is thirteen counties deep and forty-nine counties shallow
The same FAQ answers how far back the data goes with “this varies by county,” then gives the starting points. Nassau begins in 1979 to 1980. Westchester and Suffolk begin in 1981. Dutchess, Orange, Putnam and Rockland begin in 1983. Bronx, Kings, New York and Queens begin in 1986. Erie and Richmond begin in 1988. Then one sentence: “The remaining counties were added in 2002.”
Count the counties named with an earlier start and there are thirteen. Sixty-two less thirteen leaves forty-nine counties whose online civil history begins in 2002 and reaches nothing behind it. For a subject whose relevant litigation happened in Oneida or Chemung County in 1996, the state’s public index is not thin, it is silent, and silence reads exactly like an absence of cases unless you know why it is there. The county clerk’s own paper and microfilm indexes are the answer, and that is a county-by-county request rather than a search.
Omission two: the same thirteen counties are also the only fresh ones
The FAQ’s answer on update frequency names the counties refreshed four times daily: Bronx, Dutchess, Erie, Kings, Nassau, New York, Orange, Putnam, Queens, Richmond, Rockland, Suffolk and Westchester. “All others are updated once a day.”
Set that list beside the list of counties with pre-2002 history and they are the same thirteen names in a different order. We checked them off one against the other rather than assuming it. So the depth advantage and the freshness advantage sit on the same counties, and the forty-nine that lack the first also lack the second. That is a genuine structural feature of New York’s public court data, and it is why both lists are printed above instead of the conclusion alone: a reader who wants to disagree with us has everything needed to do it.
Omission three: an index number is not enough to appear
This is the exclusion that costs the most time, and the FAQ is blunt: “Even if an index number has been purchased only those cases for which a Request for Judicial Intervention (RJI) has been filed are available online.” In New York a party buys an index number from the county clerk at the outset, and the case exists from that moment. It does not become visible in the public online index until somebody files an RJI to bring the matter before a judge. A case can therefore be pending, papered and entirely real while a public search returns nothing at all.
The consequence for a locate is direct. A negative result in WebCivil Supreme means “no publicly indexed case with judicial intervention,” not “no case.” Where the question genuinely matters, whether a subject is presently in litigation or whether a claim exists, the county clerk’s file room is the record and the website is a convenience.
Omission four: sealed files and Article 81 guardianships
The FAQ also states that information is available for all cases “except for those filed under Article 81 of the Mental Hygiene law, or those which have been sealed.” Article 81 is New York’s adult guardianship article. Those proceedings are excluded from the public index by design, and the exclusion is worth understanding rather than resenting: a person under a guardianship order is very often a person whose address has recently changed, and the invisibility of that change to a public search is the system working as intended. We do not attempt to route around it.
The layer with no online index at all
Beneath the supreme court sits the busiest civil layer in the state. The Unified Court System’s town and village court directory puts it plainly: “town and village courts are collectively known as the Justice Courts,” and “many New Yorkers will have their first and only court experience in one of the almost 1,200 locally-funded Justice Courts located throughout New York State (except for New York City).” Their jurisdiction, in the court system’s own words, covers “vehicle and traffic matters, small claims, evictions, civil matters and criminal offenses in rural communities.”
When we read that directory it returned 1,172 listings. We report that as a count of listings on the day of reading rather than a count of courts, because some towns and villages share a bench and a listing is not a courthouse. The total is not really the point anyway. The point is that none of these courts appears in the eCourts case-search suite named above. Every eviction, small claim and traffic matter in suburban and rural New York outside the city produces a filed address, and the only way to see one is to identify the right town or village court and ask it, one court at a time. That court-by-court asking is work we take on: order a New York locate and we work out which Justice Court to ask and request the filed record under a permissible purpose.
Watch: Where New York Files It
The clerk, the index, and the layer underneath.
Watch Overview
Which New York Record Answers Which Question
The office, the limit, and what it is actually good for.
| What you are trying to establish | Where it lives | The limit nobody mentions | What it gives a locate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who holds title to a parcel | County clerk as register, under RPL 291 All 62 | Ownership, not occupancy. A deed names a grantee, not a resident. | A dated anchor and a chain across counties. |
| Whether a civil case exists | WebCivil Supreme, then the county clerk’s file room | Nothing appears online until an RJI is filed. | Parties, dates, and the address believed current at filing. |
| Litigation before 2002 upstate | The county clerk’s own indexes | Forty-nine counties carry no online history behind 2002. | The decade the online index cannot see. |
| An eviction or a small claim | A town or village Justice Court | Absent from the eCourts case-search suite entirely. | Usually the freshest filed address in the file. |
| A money judgment against a name | County clerk’s judgment and lien docket, under County Law 525(2) | A lower-court judgment lands there only by transcript. | A creditor who already found the person once. |
| Whether an estate is open | Surrogate’s Court, through WebSurrogate | A separate application from the civil index. | An executor and heirs with addresses of their own. |
| An adult guardianship | Article 81, Mental Hygiene Law | Excluded from the public index by design. | Nothing, and that is the correct answer. |
The Judgment Clock Runs From Two Different Events
Docketing starts the lien. The judgment-roll ends it.
Where a New York locate is attached to a debt, one provision repays careful reading, because the shorthand version of it in circulation is wrong in a way that costs creditors real time.
What CPLR 5203(a) actually says
The provision is CPLR 5203, headed “priorities and liens upon real property.” Subdivision (a) renders a transfer of the debtor’s interest in real property ineffective against the judgment creditor across a window that the statute opens “from the time of the docketing of the judgment with the clerk of the county” where the land sits, and closes “ten years after filing of the judgment-roll,” subject to lettered exceptions covering judicial sales, purchase-money mortgages, purchasers for value at a judicial sale, judgments entered after the debtor’s death, public-entity debtors, and personal representatives sued in that capacity. We counted those exceptions in the enacted text: there are six, numbered 1 through 6.
Read the two emphasised phrases again, because they name different events. Docketing with the county clerk is what starts the lien. Filing of the judgment-roll is what the ten-year clock is measured from. The judgment-roll is filed first and docketing follows it, so the lien’s life is always slightly shorter than ten years from the day it attached. It is common to see this compressed into “New York runs from the judgment-roll, not from docketing.” That is half the rule, and it drops the half that determines whether a lien exists at all. Subdivision (b) then lets a creditor move, on notice served to the debtor’s last known address, to keep the lien effective past “the expiration of ten years from the filing of the judgment-roll,” and only for defined periods: time the creditor was stayed, or the time needed to complete an advertisement and sale.
Why a research firm cares about a lien provision
Because both events happen at the county clerk, and because subdivision (b) requires notice to the debtor’s last known address. The whole mechanism assumes somebody knows where the debtor is, and that assumption has usually failed by the time a file reaches us. Locating the debtor is not incidental to an extension motion; it is a precondition of one. The same logic runs through enforcement generally, which is the subject of our guide to collecting a judgment in New York, and through the narrower problem of locating a judgment debtor once the paper is already in hand.
The transcript rule, and the trap underneath it
CPLR 5018 supplies the mechanics and contains the part people miss. Subdivision (a) says that “immediately after filing the judgment-roll the clerk shall docket a money judgment,” so a supreme or county court money judgment reaches the docket automatically. But a judgment of a court “other than the supreme, county or a family court” reaches a county docket only “upon the filing of a transcript” of its docket, and reaching any further county requires filing another transcript there.
So a justice-court judgment from a village in Ulster County is real, enforceable, and completely invisible in a Dutchess County land search until somebody walks a transcript to the Dutchess clerk. A subject can carry several small judgments that no county-level search will surface, and a creditor can hold one that attaches to nothing because the transcript was never filed where the debtor’s property actually sits. When we research recorded holdings we name which county’s docket we searched, because that is the only thing that makes the finding mean anything.
What we do not do with any of this
We report what the records show and when they were filed. We do not tell you whether your lien is still good, whether an extension motion is available to you, or what any of it means for your matter. Those are questions for your attorney, and the distinction is not a formality: it is the line between a research product and legal advice. Our findings support your counsel’s decisions rather than replacing them. Where wages rather than land are the target, the applicable limits are summarised in our page on New York wage garnishment rules, again as general information and not as advice.
Section 108 and the Files We Close
New York shields addresses by statute. We do not work around it.
Any page that talks about finding people owes a plain statement about the people who should not be found. New York’s version of that statement is written into its own law, which lets us be specific rather than merely pious about it.
What the programme is, and who runs it
Executive Law section 108 creates, in its opening line, “in the office of the secretary of state a program to be known as the ‘address confidentiality program’.” It sits in Article 6 of the Executive Law, the Department of State article, and the section says in terms that “the program shall be administered by the secretary of state.” It is a statewide programme rather than a municipal one. The classes the section names are victims of domestic violence, of human trafficking, of kidnapping, of a sexual offence and of stalking; separately, it reaches reproductive health care services providers together with the employees, volunteers, patients and immediate family members connected to them. A participant’s minor children are covered alongside the participant.
The definition that matters to a records researcher
Most descriptions of an address confidentiality programme stop at “it hides your home address.” Section 108’s own definitions go further. Subdivision 1(b) defines “actual address” as “the residential street address, school address or work address of an individual,” as specified on the application. The shield covers where a participant studies and where they work, not only where they sleep. Subdivision 1(g) then defines “public record” about as broadly as the phrase can be drafted, as “any information kept, held, filed, produced or reproduced by, with or for an agency, in any physical form whatsoever,” with a list running from reports and memoranda through maps, microfilm and computer discs.
Read those two definitions together and the reason we take this seriously is obvious. A firm that researches public records for a living is precisely what the drafting anticipated. The programme substitutes the secretary’s designated address for the participant’s real one, and the whole design collapses if a research vendor treats a substitute address as a puzzle to be solved.
So here is the decline, in plain terms
We close any file whose evident object is contact with somebody who has deliberately put distance between themselves and the person asking after them. That covers requests connected to a domestic violence relocation, an order of protection, a stalking history or a human trafficking matter, and it covers them where the pattern is present even if the stated purpose sounds routine: an urgency about somebody who moved suddenly and without notice, a caller who will not say what their interest is, a purpose that changes when it is questioned. Turning away a legitimate request occasionally is the acceptable price of never assisting one that is not.
If you are the person at risk, the programme above is the right first call and it costs nothing to apply. A local victim services agency can help with the application, and New York’s Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence maintains the wider referral network. We would rather point you at those than take your money, and that preference is not negotiable on any matter described on this page.
Where a Statewide Search Quietly Loses the Trail
Six results that look like an answer and are not.
A Clean Nothing From WebCivil
No RJI filed means no online entry. The case can be live at the clerk’s counter.
A 1990s Upstate Search
Forty-nine counties start online in 2002. Earlier files are paper at the county.
Skipping the Justice Courts
The eviction with this year’s address on it sits in a town court with no online index.
One County’s Judgment Docket
A lower-court judgment travels to another county only on a filed transcript.
Reading a Deed as a Residence
Recording proves who took title on a date. It does not prove who lives there now.
Missing the Surrogate’s File
The subject did not move. An estate names an executor and heirs who can be reached.
Who Sends Us New York Files
Grouped by which counter ends up answering.
Supreme Court Litigators
Parties and witnesses on a county clerk’s index
Enforcing a Docketed Judgment
The docket, then the parcel behind the name
Papers Waiting on an Address
A door in the right town, not the right ZIP
Estate and Surrogate Matters
Heirs and distributees scattered across counties
Loan Servicers Following Paper
A borrower whose newest deed sits in the next county
Rental Property Managers
Former tenants only, never applicant screening
Take the last card at its word. Building owners and property managers bring us former tenants, somebody who left owing rent or with an unsatisfied judgment behind them, and that is the entire scope. Whether to rent to an applicant, whether to hire someone, whether to extend credit or write insurance are different questions in federal law: those decisions run on a consumer report, and producing one is the business of a consumer reporting agency operating under the permissible-purpose provisions. We are not a consumer reporting agency and nothing we produce is a consumer report, so it may not lawfully be used for any of those purposes. That line was drawn by statute rather than by us, and no fee moves it. Everything behind the other five cards begins identically whoever is holding the file: a name, whatever identifiers are already in your possession, and the purpose being worked under. Given those three, a first read on a New York matter is usually back within 24 hours.
From Purpose to Sourced Finding
Four steps, in the order New York’s records reward.
State the Purpose First
One sentence, checked against what each source may lawfully be used for.
Pin the County, Then the Person
The county resets the whole search. A namesake never inherits the file.
Work the Clerk, Then the Layer Below
Register, court file and judgment docket, then the Justice Court.
Say Which Counter Produced It
Each finding names its office and its date. Gaps are written down as gaps.
The Limits We Publish Up Front
What we are, what we are not, and what we will not do to close a gap.
Sixty-two counties and a statute book describe what exists. They are not a licence to go looking. Two questions settle whether a New York file is opened at all, who is asking and for what, and both are answered before an index is touched.
Permissible purpose, stated before any search runs
Every matter opens with the lawful purpose it is being worked for, put in a sentence we can repeat back: serving process, enforcing a judgment, locating a party or a witness, administering an estate, reconnecting a family. That is not paperwork. Federal law restricts which sources may be used for which purposes, with driver and vehicle record use limited by the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act and non-public personal financial information restricted by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley disclosure limits, so the stated purpose determines what may lawfully be touched on your matter. A request that arrives without one is not worked, however sympathetic the story attached to it.
What we run is a public-records research desk
It reads what New York’s counties and courts have already filed, sets lawfully licensed data alongside that, checks the two against each other, and prints the source of every line.
Everything we hand over came from a record that can be named
We do not access private financial account contents. Everything we hand over came from a record that can be named.
The screening requests we turn down
Restating the boundary from the audience section, because it is the one that gets tested: our research is not a consumer report and we are not a consumer reporting agency, so no output of ours may be used to decide a tenancy, a hire, a credit extension or an insurance policy, or to set the terms of any of them. Those decisions require a consumer report and the adverse-action process that goes with it. Where a request is really a screening request, we say so and decline it rather than reshaping the deliverable.
General information, not legal advice
Everything here describes how New York organises its records and what its statutes say on their face. It is not legal advice, it creates no professional relationship, and it is no substitute for a lawyer reading your matter. Statutes are amended, court applications change what they publish, and a page written against sources on one day is a snapshot of that day. We supply the factual layer: who the person is, what the records say, and when they were filed. Conclusions about your rights belong to you and your counsel, and where a wider search is warranted our general skip tracing services follow the same rule wherever they run.
The Standard This Page Is Written To
Higher up we counted the sixty-two counties out of the court system’s own list instead of repeating a number, and we said plainly that the 1,172 figure counts directory listings rather than courthouses, because some benches are shared. A report is built to the same rule. An unattributed finding is only a claim with a date printed beside it, so each line carries the New York county and the specific office that produced it, and wherever an index runs out – 2002 upstate, an RJI never filed, a matter sealed by order – that limit is written in the same plain words used for what was found. Records-based research since 2004: whatever could not be confirmed lawfully stays on the page as unconfirmed.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the county clerk actually do in New York, and why start there?
Three jobs at once, which is unusual. County Law section 525 says the county clerk performs the duties prescribed by law as register, is the clerk of the supreme court and of the county court, and keeps the judgment and lien dockets. The New York Constitution states the court-clerk part separately in article VI, section 6(e). Real Property Law section 291 sends recorded conveyances to the same office. So a single county office can date a person against recorded land, civil litigation and money judgments in one visit, and there is no separately elected clerk of court to fall back on if you aim at the wrong county. Starting there is not a preference, it is where New York put the records.
How far back do New York online court records go?
It depends heavily on the county, and the split is sharper than most people expect. The court system’s own frequently-asked-questions page for WebCivil Supreme lists earlier starting points for thirteen counties: Nassau from 1979 to 1980, Westchester and Suffolk from 1981, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam and Rockland from 1983, Bronx, Kings, New York and Queens from 1986, and Erie and Richmond from 1988. It then says the remaining counties were added in 2002. Sixty-two counties less those thirteen leaves forty-nine whose online civil history begins in 2002. For anything earlier in those counties the record is the county clerk’s own index, requested county by county.
I searched the state civil index and found nothing. Does that mean there is no case?
No, and this is the most misread result in New York. The WebCivil Supreme FAQ states that even where an index number has been purchased, only cases for which a Request for Judicial Intervention has been filed are available online. A party buys an index number from the county clerk at the outset, so the case exists from that moment, but it stays invisible in the public online index until an RJI brings the matter before a judge. Sealed cases and Article 81 guardianship proceedings under the Mental Hygiene Law are also excluded by design. A nil result means no publicly indexed case with judicial intervention, not no case.
What is a town or village justice court, and why does it matter for finding someone?
The Unified Court System calls town and village courts collectively the Justice Courts, and describes them as almost 1,200 locally funded courts across New York State outside New York City, handling vehicle and traffic matters, small claims, evictions, civil matters and criminal offences in rural communities. When we read the state directory it returned 1,172 listings, which counts listings rather than courthouses since some towns and villages share a bench. They matter enormously for a locate because they carry the everyday filings, an eviction, a small claim, a traffic ticket, each filed against an address somebody believed was current that week. They also do not appear in the eCourts case-search suite at all, so the only way to see them is to identify the right court and ask it.
What does this service actually cover in New York?
We are a skip tracing and public-records research firm: we read filed records and lawfully licensed data, corroborate them, and document their source. We do not run surveillance.
How do I find out whether someone has a judgment against them in New York?
Through the county clerk’s judgment and lien docket, which County Law section 525 puts in the same office as the land records, but check more than one county. CPLR 5018 provides that a money judgment is docketed immediately after the judgment-roll is filed, while a judgment of a court other than the supreme, county or family court reaches a county docket only on the filing of a transcript, and reaches any further county only on filing another transcript there. So a village justice court judgment can be entirely real and completely absent from the docket in the county where the debtor owns property. When we research recorded holdings we name which county’s docket we searched, because a clean result in one county says nothing about the next.
Can you research property and assets in New York, and what are the limits?
Yes, within a defined boundary. We research recorded interests, meaning deeds, mortgages, liens and docketed judgments, through the county clerk acting as register under Real Property Law section 291, and we report what the records show with the office and the date attached. A recorded deed proves who took title and when, not who occupies the property today, and we do not blur that. We do not access private financial account contents, we do not obtain information from any institution by misrepresentation, and we work only under a stated permissible purpose. What you receive is a corroborated picture of what New York’s records hold in a name, suitable for a judgment, an estate or another lawful purpose, and it is not a valuation or a legal opinion about what you may do with it.
What if the person may have moved to get away from someone?
Then we decline the file. New York runs an address confidentiality program created by Executive Law section 108 in the office of the secretary of state and administered by the secretary. Its protected classes run from victims of domestic violence, of trafficking, of kidnapping, of a sexual offence and of stalking, through to reproductive health care services providers and the people who work with, volunteer for or are treated by them. Its definition of actual address reaches a participant’s residential, school and work addresses, so the shield is deliberately wider than a home address. We do not take work aimed at reaching somebody who has deliberately made themselves hard to find, and we turn it away where that pattern shows even if the stated purpose sounds ordinary. If you are the person at risk, that programme is a better first call than any locate service, ours included.
Start a Statewide New York Locate
Send a name, whatever identifiers you already hold, the last address anyone put on paper with a rough date, and the lawful purpose behind the request. From there most of the work is routing: the county clerk’s register and court indexes where the file is county-level, the judgment and lien docket where a debt sits behind it, the Surrogate’s Court where an estate does, and the right town or village Justice Court when the freshest piece of paper is an eviction or a small claim. A first read usually comes back within 24 hours. Contact us to open a matter.
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