Delaware Public Records: How to Perform a Delaware Public Records Search

Access to Delaware public records is a statutory provision of the Delaware Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA). 

The series of data contained in these Delaware public records are collated and profiled by government agencies, the courts, and other public institutions and made available in varying degrees to the public.

Most people look to find these records to get information about their prospective employees, tenants, or someone who they have any form of business with. 

If you are one of such persons, this short piece should guide you on how to find public records in Delaware.

How to Find Public Records in Delaware:

There are several types of public records Delaware access options. Unless a record has been sealed, expunged, or belongs to a person who is underage, you can find Delaware public records in several ways. 

You can perform a Delaware free public records search with Backgroundcheck.co, or perform a check in several other ways, as described below.

About Delaware Court Records

Delaware Court records are legal documents containing copies of cases heard at the courts in Delaware. 

Your first move in your quest to find court records should be to visit the clerk of the courthouse (the court's record custodian) known to have tried your case.

Alternatively, you can use the CourtConnect platform, an online database of court records, and civil and criminal cases, all of which are managed by the Delaware Judiciary and made accessible to the public. 

You can search for court records in this online case management platform using the names of persons/parties involved in the case, key case information, and judgment status. 

Public Records in Delaware: Delaware Vital Records

Delaware Vital records are a class of public records in Delaware that comprise birth records, death records, marriage records, and divorce records. 

These records are marked by certain similarities in the sense that they mostly feature a certificate showing the dates and places where the "vital events" happened, the parties, and key witnesses to the event. 

The next couple of sections briefly describes how to find these vital records in Delaware. 

Public Records in Delaware: Marriage & Divorce Records

A typical Marriage record throws up a marriage certificate containing key details about the marriage's venue, date, and the parties involved. These certificates can be found at any of the statewide offices of the Delaware Vital Statistics. 

Officials of this government agency respond in a matter of weeks to mailed inquiries about the availability and collection of marriage records, mostly by persons named in the record, or their legal representative.  

A visit to their office to make a marriage record request should significantly cut the waiting time. 

Your request application form may include fields for providing your names, relationship with the record holder, and a valid ID, to be submitted along with a $25 fee for each copy requested.

In the same breath, Divorce records can also be collected from the office of Vital Statistics, Delaware, by eligible persons—those named in the record, their parents, children, and legal representatives. 

They can also reach out to the persons holding sway at the family court records department in the county in which the divorce decree was issued.

The cost for this service rises for a Delaware public records search from $1 for non-certified copies to $4 for certified copies with the difference between them marked by the legal utility of the latter. 

Extra fees may accrue if the records are not obtained in person as well as if they have to be collected from the state archives. 

Public Records Delaware: Birth & Death Records

Delaware Birth records are only accessible to the record holder, their parents, adult children, or a legal representative of any of these persons until 72 years when they are thrown open to the public. 

So, these are not considered Delaware public records entirely. Certified copies of these birth records and birth certificates are available for collection at the office of Vital Statistics in Delaware, with each copy costing $25. 

Requesters are made to fill out and submit a birth certificate request application form and submit it by mail to the office, or deliver it in person.

The same goes for persons interested in obtaining Death records in Delaware. 

The cost of obtaining certified copies of the record stays at $25 and any of the three Vital Statistics offices in Delaware are responsible for issuing these certificates. 

Delaware Criminal records

A Delaware criminal record is an official document that contains information about persons convicted of a crime/s in the state. 

A vast majority of the information found in these records is culled from the series of interactions between law enforcement officials with the accused persons. 

They include the subject's personal information and physical identifiers, mugshots, the circumstances surrounding their arrest, charges, bail/bond conditions, sentencing information, etc.

Officials of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) Delaware, are to be approached for the dissemination of certified copies of criminal records to interested requesters. 

They mostly demand that the requester presents a Valid government ID or a driver's license, and a fingerprint card to process a criminal background check. The cost for this service is $52, to be paid to the Delaware State Police. 

Public Records in Delaware: Third-party Websites

All of the Delaware public records types discussed in this article can be found on third-party websites. 

These websites, such as backgroundcheck.co, aggregate data from public records of all sorts and make them available through search portals at the click of a few buttons.

You only have to enter the name of the record holder and the city/county/state where the record was originally filed, in the designated text fields. 

You should find the desired record in a very short while after whittling down the stream of matching results that are originally displayed.