Property, Personal Effects and Probate Records

Property, Personal Effects and Probate Records

A probate court has the job of keeping and maintaining records concerning the last will of a deceased person.  The court will also determine whether or not the will is authentic or whether or not some sort of fraud has been committed. 

If the deceased person did not leave a will behind, the probate court will use the existing inheritance laws of the state to determine who will receive the property and assets of a deceased person. 

Because the probate records often exist on properties going back into the early twentieth century, people who want to research information on their families can look through probate records to do so.  Some of the information that one can use from probate records in researching a family tree are time and place of death, the family members names and any property owned by the family. 

All of this information is found in the probate records.If the deceased person did not leave a will, there will be a letter in the probate records that allowed the executor of the will to distribute the property according to the wishes of the deceased.

A faster and simpler way of investigating probate records than visiting a court house is using online probate records, which nowadays contain everything in the probate court records.  If you believe that you have a claim to a certain piece of property that is under dispute, probate records would be the first place to start looking.  More likely than not, you will find the truth about the ownership of a particular piece of property through probate records, although it can become a complicated issue. 

Another reason to explore probate records could be to research you family history.  If you are trying to build a genealogical map of your family, you can trace a long way back into your history through probate records because women's maiden names are used throughout the documents. Researching your family history through probate records used to be a lengthy and inconvenient process.  The researcher had to travel to the courthouse in the county involved and search records by hand, with or without a clerk to help sift through whatever filing system used by that particular county.  Sometimes the serious family researcher would hire someone in another town to do the leg work, if the county records were far away.

Now, fortunately, most probate records can now be accessed online, which will keep the family researcher from having to travel to a strange and sometimes faraway county to sift through antiquated filing systems and musty documents.  There are now websites available that have organized the information for you to access with the push of a button, a fast and efficient way to research.  Even if you cannot access all of the information you need on your family through the internet, because the sheer volume of probate records does not always allow for putting the complete records on the internet, you can still get a case number and some basic information before you travel to the county in question.  When you travel to the county where the records are held, having specific information and case numbers will help to expedite the process.
 
Most of the companies on the internet that compile probate records also allow you to order whatever is available on their sites to be sent to your home.  With these compiled records, you can be sure that the internet companies obtained them directly from the courthouses involved and often include documentation from the original court cases including verbal testimonials and written manuscripts.