Public Divorce Records provides a great deal of information. They contain the personal particulars of the separating spouses and children such as names, ages and birth dates. Marriage date, place and even time and who performed the solemnization or ceremony may also be available. Financial information, custody, alimony, restraining orders, filing numbers, grounds, final decree and so forth, where applicable, will all show up.

Divorce Records can become useful to people for a variety of reasons and purposes. The top reason for delving into the private matters of others must be checking on a prospective spouse. From the background history depicted through the records, it is possible to get some good indications on the future marriage of the person. If there were personal problems leading to an earlier divorce such as abuse or violence, has the prospective spouse been cured or rehabilitated? Has he or she come clean with you on it?

A divorce record search can also be used to determine the official marital status. This is important especially if someone is intending to remarry. In order to remarry, someone has to be legally divorced from the previous marriage to be eligible. Often, people fail to follow through on formalizing and legalizing their divorce, especially in cases when it was uncontested and a response was not filed. Also, only certified copies of the divorce certificate is acceptable in most cases, thus entailing a longer waiting time in the application of the records.

Divorce records searches are also good starting points for genealogy and family tree research where separations and divorces are known to have occurred through the generations and times. Biological parents and other blood relations have been established and united through divorce searches too. Other purposes for which divorce records are used are immigration matters, claim to inheritance or other rights and privileges, name change, tax liability, child burden, even name smearing and other creative purposes and ideas.

Public Divorce Records falls under state jurisdiction. As such, records are maintained at state level. For those states without a central record repository to upload to, the records remained at the county courthouses where the complete divorce was conducted. Divorce records, albeit private in nature, are classified as public records nevertheless. Hence, it is a relatively straight-forward process to obtain anyone's divorce records as long as the required procedures are complied with. There may also be a fee involved.