Change to payment procedure for Sheriff's civil process in Shelby County

We just learned that Sheriff's civil process fees in Shelby County must now be paid directly to the Sheriff rather than via the e-filing system.

That means when you e-file a document that you want the Shelby County Sheriff to serve, you must supply the Sheriff with three copies of the document accompanied by the payment of $25. Attorney's offices may pay using a business checking account. Individuals must pay via cash, certified check, or money order. Personal checks are not an acceptable form of payment.

This new information has been added to our previous post containing a complete list of e-filing counties and their procedures for Sheriff's service:

http://blog.doxpop.com/2016/07/e-filing-paying-sheriff-for-civil.html

E-Filing will be required for NEW case filings in Hamilton County beginning in 2017

So far, when Counties have made E-Filing "mandatory", it has only been for subsequent filings, meaning any filing on a case that already exists. Attorneys have been allowed to initiate new cases by filing on paper.

Starting on January 1, 2017, attorneys will be required to complete initial filings electronically in Hamilton Circuit & Superior Courts in the following case types:

AD – Adoption
CB – Foreign Judgment
CC – Civil Collection
CT – Civil Tort
DC* – Domestic Relations with Children
DN* – Domestic Relations without Children
EM – Estate, Miscellaneous
ES – Estate, Supervised
EU – Estate, Unsupervised
GU – Guardianship
JP – Juvenile Paternity
MF – Mortgage Foreclosure
MH – Mental Health
MI – Miscellaneous Civil
PC – Post-Conviction Relief
PL – Civil Plenary
RS – Reciprocal Support
SC – Small Claim
TP* – Verified Petition for Issuance of a Tax Deed
TR – Trust
TS* – Application for Judgment in a Tax Sale
XP – Expungement
(*The DC, DN, TP and TS case types are new, and will be added on 1/1/17) 

Remember that when you e-file a new case, you are responsible for service. (The clerk will not longer handle certified mail or hand the document off to the Sheriff for you.) If you are unsure of the rules for initiating a case, give us a call, and we'll be happy to talk you through it over the phone or come do a training session at your office to get you up to speed.

Marion County Courts begin E-Filing... but not the Township Courts.

Marion County Circuit and Superior courts began e-filing on all cases except juvenile last Friday (10/28.) A couple of users have inquired about whether the Marion County Township Courts are included. They are not.

In addition, we have learned that Marion is one of the counties where payments to the Sheriff for civil process (service) must be made directly to the Sheriff when the document is delivered rather than paid via the e-filing system.

This has been noted on our list of counties and how they handle sheriff's civil process payments.

Doxpop is expanding the Customer Support Team

We are currently seeking a Customer Service Representative to join our amazing Customer Support Team! Read more details about the position and how to apply here: https://www.doxpop.com/us/careers/

New: Quickly find Easements in Land Records

In order to respond to a request from some of our newer users, we've broken out documents that are or relate directly to Easements into their own document type. These documents were generally located under Miscellaneous in the past, and this change should make them easier to locate.

To see all of the document type options, visit our Advanced Search in the "recorded documents" or "register of deeds" tab and select the drop-down menu for Document Type. This will display all of our searchable document types.

For more help with Advanced Search, visit our help section or contact us.

Validation date added to Recorder (IN) and Register of Deeds (MI) records.

Doxpop has just added a "validation time" for Recorder and Register of Deeds offices. This is similar to what many offices call their "effective date". Here's how it works:

The validation time for each county office is the recording time of the most recent document that has been verified. This means all documents recorded at the same office before that time have been completely indexed and verified.

This works because the indexing system used by all Recorders and Registers that send their information to Doxpop is designed to ensure that documents are indexed and verified in the order they are received. The validation time allows researchers put the appropriate effective date on research they do through Doxpop.

• When selecting a single-county region for any document search, you will find the validation time for the county displayed under the region box. 

• When viewing the index details for any document, you will find the validation time for the source county of that document in the top left corner, next to the county name.

Here's an example:

If you have any questions about validation times, please feel free to give us a call or email.

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.

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

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!