View & Obtain Free San Bernardino County Divorce Records

Access free San Bernardino County divorce records today to uncover facts about an individual’s marital status.

The California Public Records Act (PRA) guarantees that public records information is accessible unless legally made private. Most divorce proceedings in California aren’t confidential, and people can access dissolution of marriage details any time for any reason.

The search tools presented throughout this resource empower you to quickly and conveniently find detailed information about anyone’s divorce history in San Bernardino County, California.

How Do I Look Up Free San Bernardino County Divorce Records?

Interested people can search for free and find information about public divorce records in San Bernardino by using the county’s Court Access Portal.¹ The Superior Court of California makes this platform available so that individuals can look up all sorts of court cases that were handled under their local jurisdiction.² That includes divorce proceedings in San Bernardino.

After accepting the disclaimer on the initial page, users of the Court Access Portal are taken to the page where they can learn the rules of the court for public records and start a search. They can do that by clicking on the “search” button, present on the options bar, followed by “case search”.

The case search page presents some options. Searches by case or citation number don’t require creating an account. Those searches are uncommon, especially when the party making the search isn’t directly connected to the case.

Users who wish to search by name (both individuals and businesses’ names) must create an account. All the searches and the account creation are free, but it’ll involve sharing some personal information, such as their phone number and email. Users should be prepared to do that if they wish to run searches freely.

Searches can be done by first and last name only. Adding a middle name or initial may yield more targeted results, while typing only two letters of a first or last name followed by an asterisk will allow for a wild card search and, quite possibly, bring up a large list of results.

The results are presented to the user as a list of cases with name, date of filing, case number, status, and case type. This system isn’t a divorce index and, initially, all case types will be brought up.

To narrow the list, users can use the filter box at the top of the list. Keywords like “dissolution” or “minor” are helpful in uncovering divorce cases.

When the desired case is found, searchers can click on “view case” and see all facts and details about it – including the parties involved in it, the hearings, and events related to it, among other things. It’s also possible to see if the case is closed (indicating the divorce is finalized) or active (indicating it’s still ongoing).

The San Bernardino Superior Court had a full directory of Court Districts in the county, but those are the ones that deal with family law and, consequently, marriage dissolutions:⁴

To obtain a certified copy of a certificate or a full copy of a divorce decree, interested searchers must contact the Superior Court and place a request. They can do it by mail or email, following a few simple instructions.

All orders must include a completed Request for Administrative Judicial Records.⁵ For mail-in requests, the searcher must include payment. Certified copies of certificates cost $15, and full decrees cost $40.

Decrees tend to have more details and information than a certificate, but in most cases, a certificate is all that’s needed for official and unofficial purposes. Also, there’s a complete fee schedule in case the searcher is interested in more than the divorce records.⁶

This is the contact information of the department that handles those requests:

Superior Court of California – County of San Bernardino
Court Executive Office – Public Records Request
247 W 3rd St. – 11th floor
San Bernardino, CA 92415

Email: [email protected]

Check With Cities & Towns Within San Bernardino County for Local Divorce & Dissolution Records

The state of California centralizes all divorce information with the local Superior Courts in each county.

This way, concerned citizens don’t need to run around chasing information that can be conveniently found at the same repository around the state. Therefore, all those who wish to uncover information about a divorce that happened in San Bernardino must contact one of the Superior Court Districts in the county instead of trying to contact municipal courts.⁷

The same information is true, by the way, for all counties in California. Even when municipal courts handle divorce cases, all records are kept with the Superior Court and, after some time, are moved to the State Archives. How to obtain copies of records from these sources will be addressed below.

How To View Divorce Records for the Entire State of California via Superior Court Search Tools

Like the San Bernardino Superior Court, courts all over California make their records available to concerned citizens so they can conveniently search and find information about marriage dissolutions. There isn’t, however, a centralized free online system that contains information about the whole state.

On the contrary, the fact in California is that searchers must know which court handled the divorce proceeding that’s being sought and, consequently, is the repository of the information they’re trying to obtain.

Knowing which court to contact, searchers can look for their options in terms of how they can accomplish that. There are usually three choices available in those courts:

• Visit the court and ask the clerk’s office for records;
• Use the court computers to look for electronic records;
• Utilize their online tool and conveniently run searches from home.

The Judicial Branch of California has a directory of Superior Courts in the state, with locations and contact information.⁸ This list is useful and can help citizens save time when searching for divorce records.

Another way to obtain a certificate of records for a divorce is to work with the Vital Records Office.¹⁰ The California Department of Public Health, through the Vital Records Office, makes records from divorces that happened between 1962 and 1984 available to interested citizens.

They aren’t able to provide the actual decree of a divorce (which is only available through the Superior Court), but they can be quite helpful when the search isn’t limited to San Bernardino County and the divorce in question happened during the time frame they keep.

They accept requests by mail. Searchers must send a completed application along with payment ($16 per certificate) to the following address:¹¹

California Department of Public Health
Vital Records – Mail Stop 5103
Post Office Box 997410
Sacramento, CA 95899-7410

Phone: 916.445.2684
Email: [email protected]

The Availability of Divorce Records in San Bernardino County California

Divorce records are public in California and, by default, in San Bernardino too. Anyone interested in a dissolution can contact the records repository and ask for a copy of those documents. The only exceptions are confidential divorces, which are only accessible to the former couple – but those are fairly uncommon.

There are two things to keep in mind regarding divorce records for those who are searching for information. First, divorce papers and decrees (or certificates) aren’t the same thing: papers are the set of documents someone receives when they’re summoned because their former significant other has filed for divorce.

Those papers merely establish that a court proceeding will take place and give the person who was served those papers time to plan accordingly (by hiring an attorney, for example). The papers someone is served when starting a divorce aren’t final, far from it.

When looking for divorce records, the goal usually is to establish that a marriage dissolution has been finalized. That can be proven by a divorce certificate or a proper decree.

Second, California doesn’t acknowledge common-law marriages because there’s no law in the state to regulate them. Therefore, it also doesn’t acknowledge common-law divorces. It means that unless people were properly married at a certain point in time, there would be no record of their break up – and, consequently, those events will not appear in any public records search that may be performed.

When searching for San Bernardino County divorce records, interested citizens can take advantage of different tools that will return their desired information; this resource outlines and links the best options available.