Marital, or more precisely failed marital history, can tell a lot about a person. When a relationship gets serious enough, its a good idea to check out how your partner stacks up in that area. It could be touchy to be direct about it, so its better to do it in a discreet way.

Whatever the case, the fact of the matter is that free public divorce records are readily accessible nowadays. People wont be in the dark about a partners divorce or marriage history if only a little precautionary or due diligence action is taken.

Public Divorce Records are under State jurisdiction. They are one of the public vital records along with Marriage, Death and Birth which are maintained at state level. The majority of the states now have a central repository which is typically housed at the Statistics or Records Department. As divorce records can contain personal information, certain states impose some degree of restriction on its accessibility and use but by on large, they are accessible by the public as long as they are done through the proper channels. Standard information retrievable from public divorce records includes personal particulars of the couple, time and location, filing information, decree and child custody.

Although divorce public records have been around a long time, it used to be a big challenge to obtain them before the introduction of computerization. Of course, the advent of Internet gave the whole information industry a further boost. Today, it is way more convenient and effortless to conduct public divorce record searches than before, whether it is done online or on-site. Even the traditional hardcopy retrieval is a breeze, courtesy of the office automation.

There are basically two versions of public divorce records, namely Free Divorce Records and the fee-based. As with most things in life, the FOC records wont suffice for anything further than casual snooping or browsing. Fortunately, commercial competition in the records industry is keen so fees are reasonable and quality is high. Its generally worth the expenditure as the stakes in public divorce records are often high.