Seat: Austin · Major metro
Texas split-court county. District Clerk handles felony, family, civil district court (online case lookup with documents from Dec 2005). County Clerk handles misdemeanor and probate via tccsearch.org (data from June 1986+). JP courts on separate Tyler Tech Odyssey portal. Marriage at County Clerk; divorce at District Clerk.
Start with the systems most likely to change your read of a person. Then cross-check custody, registries, and paper-trail sources before you go wider.
Run county and statewide court portals first. Civil, criminal, family, and lower-court systems are often separate, so this is where most missed records happen.
Use jail, corrections, and registry systems to catch records that do not show up in a normal court search.
Recorder, assessor, prosecutor, records-request, and licensing sources help verify addresses, liens, ownership, agency records, and local context.
Federal court and incarceration systems sit outside local portals. Run them before you decide the search is clean.
Texas runs the Public Information Act (Gov. Code Chapter 552) — strong on paper, generally responsive in practice (10 business days for most agencies). The state-court system is fragmented: Texas has 254 counties (the most of any state) and each runs its own District and County courts. The Office of Court Administration runs re:SearchTX as a statewide aggregator, but coverage varies by county and full-document access often costs money.
Typical response · 10 business days for most records requests under Public Information Act; instant for online court and registry lookups