Clerk of Courts

Astonishment was what I felt when reviewing the magnitude of services offered by the Clerk of Courts office. Having believed that the office merely contained court documents relating to civil and criminal cases, I was taken aback by the amount of public documents that they processed. Unbeknownst to myself was the fact that a door-to-door salesman needed a permit to operate his business which in turn was issued by the Clerk of Courts office. It has been a struggle for myself to determine what avenues to take in finding public documents when creating an article and the Clerk of Courts has offered me a plethora of documents. No longer do I believe that I need to go to the public library and labor over microfiche in order to garner public records documents. Instead I now understand that I can obtain marriage licenses, mortgages, judgments and court papers. Moreover, it seems in my best interest to request the documents in person for a quicker return and smaller charge.

In addition to my newfound knowledge of the services offered to the public, I was interested in the facts detailing marriage licenses. I really enjoyed the fact that the office offers a discount on marriage licenses to those who partake in a pre-marital class. It was astounding at how many marriage licenses that the office issued in a year and I believe that pre-marital counseling will help to keep those marriages intact and possibly decrease the office’s call center’s calls for annulment assistance. In fact, I was amazed at how many calls the switchboard receives in a day. Before taking this class, I was unaware of the services available to me. It was pleasing to read that many citizens use the services offered to them by the Clerk of Courts.