The trend of looking at a public court records for various reasons is catching up. Public records are open to public access and have many advantages. You can search public records to find email address, telephone numbers and other contact details of old friends, you can even look for lost people, old girlfriend or boy friend. You can check if the boyfriend of your daughter is cheating on her, or check if he has any criminal record.  In case you intend to buy a property, check whether there are any claims on the property you intend to buy. Whether the neighborhood is peaceful or the neighbors are trouble makers. You can check details on the valuation of deals in the neighboring areas and know if you are paying a higher price.

In case you are planning to get married, you can check the records of your would be spouse. Before hiring a baby sitter for your child, you might want to find court records of the nanny, whether the baby sitter has past criminal record. If you intend to go for adoption, then, you need to look at the public records to know if a child is available for adoption, the history of the parents etc can be known through public records.

An employer would refer to your public record finder to know about your family background, your past employers, whether you have any criminal record, your financial records etc can be known by looking at your public records.

Before joining a company, you can check the financial status of the company and also check whether the company has filed for bankruptcy or whether any claim is pending in the court. You can get details of the past claims, if any.

Private investigators, lawyers, and law enforcement officials all access public record databases to find out more about a person's past, with regard to any criminal activity. Accessing public court record databases in this manner has helped law enforcement officials to crack many difficult cases, even those that have taken years to crack.

Additionally, Tax consultants check court records to know the valuation of property to ascertain the tax amount.

We have seen that there are immense advantages of looking in to public records. It does the work of a private detective at much lower cost. You can get the details from the government sites or you can walk in to the concerned department after an appointment or even fax them your requirements. The ideal course of action would be getting the information from the government sites. This way, you can access the information at any time as per your convenience without having to wait in long queues and without having to take prior appointments. Moreover you can remain anonymous as you search the data online.  The information contained in the government records is reliable as compared to the data maintained by the private agencies.

However, the drawback with the government agencies is that the information is not assembled in a particular format. Each state or county will maintain records in their own formats. There are private agencies who done the work of collecting and assimilation of data, for the ease of the users. They may charge a small fee, but it would save you a lot of time and energy.