Doxpop - Tools for Attorneys and Public Information Researchers: August 2016

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Did e-filing just become mandatory in your county? Tips for getting started quickly...

This week, e-filing becomes mandatory for all filings on existing cases in Clark, Shelby, Harrison, Madison, Henry, Floyd and Hendricks County Courts.

If you are feeling unprepared, we can help.

First, you'll need to get your e-filing account set up correctly. At a minimum this means you need to have:
  • One or more E-Filing Users
  • One or more Attorney records.
  • A service contact record for each attorney in the firm
  • A credit card entered to pay any filing fees incurred.
The initial account setup is the most challenging part of e-filing, so if any of the components listed above are missing, we invite you to call us for help in this portion of the process. It's much easier to work on this together before you begin than to go back and correct problems. Give us a call at 866-369-7671 during office hours and we'll walk you through this part. We promise that a friendly and patient person will answer your call.

If you have looked at your e-filing account administration page and all of the components listed above are in place, you are ready to begin. It may help to briefly review our videos demonstrating a filing on an existing case and filing a new case:







Of course, you should always feel free to give us a call if you'd like someone on the phone to walk you through the process the first couple of times. We are happy to help. 

Call us at 866-369-7671.

Monday, August 22, 2016

E-Filing: Restrictions on document dimensions removed. (But you still need to use Letter size!)

Previously, Doxpop rejected documents larger than 8-1/2 X 11 inches to prevent filings that don't conform to the requirements of Indiana Administrative Rule 11.

Now, we have learned that the clerks will not reject any filing due to size, so for now, we have removed the rejection based on size and in the coming weeks will be replacing it with a warning so you will know if you might be filing a non-confirming document, but are not blocked from doing so.

Why would we want to allow non-conforming documents through? A couple of good reasons:

  • Documents that are just a tiny bit too large due to skewed scanning don't really present a big problem to the courts, so within reasonable limits "close enough" applies.
  • For Trial Courts. AR 11 allows larger documents to be attached as exhibits. This includes wills created before 1/1/1992.

Paying the Sheriff's fees in new e-filing counties

Several new counties have joined the E-Filing system since we last posted, and we have just asked them all how they want payment to the Sheriff for Civil Process on new cases to be handled.

In Rush County, payments should be made through the e-filing system.

In Cass, Franklin, Jackson and Union counties, attach your payment to the document when you deliver it to the Sheriff.

For the complete list of payment procedures for all counties, refer to this previous post, which we update regularly: http://blog.doxpop.com/2016/07/e-filing-paying-sheriff-for-civil.html

Monday, August 1, 2016

Welcome to the Bay County, Michigan Register of Deeds.

This week we are adding our first Michigan County to Doxpop.

Brandon Krause, the Register of Deeds for Bay County, Michigan has selected Doxpop to provide on-line access to the documents recorded in his office.

We are awaiting official confirmation of how far back records go. Based on record counts, it appears that complete indexes and images are available from 1973 forward. Brandon and his staff have been working on a significant back-scanning and indexing project, so there is an impressive amount of information available already (over 930,000 documents!) They are adding more history every week.

Use the buttons in the upper right corner of the screen to toggle between Michigan and Indiana. Your Doxpop subscription will work in either state, so there's no need to pay for any new services. The addition of Michigan just adds even more value to the subscription you already have.

Folks who are used to searching the Indiana Recorder records on Doxpop will find that the Michigan Register of Deeds records are similar.
  • The main difference is that the "Instrument Number" used in Indiana is replaced by "Liber/Page" in Michigan. This is nearly identical to the "Book/Page" designation used in older Indiana Records.
  • In the Advanced Search area, Corners become a searchable record in Michigan. This is used to locate the documentation for original or remonumented section corners as the basis of surveys.
Since this is Doxpop's first foray into Michigan, we may change a few details about the system as we gather feedback from early users, but of course our main feature of excellent customer service will remain the centerpiece as we expand our services.

As we move forward on this project, we will be quickly adding the Doxpop Property Watch service and later interfacing with the Bay County Geographical Information System to extend the services available in Bay County beyond those previously available.

Thanks to Brandon Krause and his staff for all of their help on this project. What a great team to work with!