Kentucky Court Records

Kentucky Court Record Lookup

Copies of Kentucky KY court records serve many purposes: to enforce a financial judgment, to establish child custody, to take possession of real property, or to prove a term of probation has been served. These Kentucky court records online are public record and can be accessed by performing a Kentucky court records search, with some limitations.

District Courts

Kentucky is divided into 60 judicial districts, each with a district court. These courts handle small claims cases up to $4,000, domestic abuse cases, misdemeanors, juvenile issues, probate, and traffic offenses. Case information can be viewed via Kentucky court case lookup.

Trial Courts

The trial courts of general jurisdiction in Kentucky are the circuit courts, of which there are 57 across the state. The mentioned Kentucky courthouses hear general civil and criminal cases, small claims above $4,000 in value, real property cases, and probate matters. In addition, these courts hear appeals of some state administrative agency and district court decisions. Family courts are a division within the circuit courts that deal with Kentucky child support and custody, divorce, neglect, child support, and other domestic issues.

Records can be accessed by conducting a Kentucky court record lookup, but some records, particularly juvenile matters and those involving sensitive information about victims of crimes may be restricted from the public. You can also find out Kentucky criminal records through Recordsfinder.com's online search.

Circuit courts statewide have averaged about 33,000 criminal cases and nearly 44,000 civil cases per year. There is an average of more than 7,000 domestic and family cases filed each year.

Appeals Courts

Fourteen justices sit in panels of three to hear disputed decisions from lower courts in various locations across the state.

The state supreme court has exclusive jurisdiction over death penalty cases as well as sentences of life imprisonment and the like.

Federal Courts

Each state has at least one U.S. District Court that handles bankruptcy filings, class action suits, violations of federal laws and the like. 

Kentucky Notable Court Cases

A well-publicized act of civil disobedience pitted the county clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky against the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015. After the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was a right guaranteed under the Constitution, the county clerk refused to issue marriage licenses to anyone, based on her own religious convictions that gay marriage is wrong. The case quickly escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a one-sentence denial of the appeal, essentially ordering the clerk to issue licenses to any and all couples who met other requirements for a marriage license.

In 2016 the Kentucky governor, who ran for office on a platform that included a pro-life, anti-abortion stance, won an injunction from the state court of appeals to close an abortion provider's clinic because, the governor said, the facility was not properly licensed. The clinic had previously fended off other attempts to curtail its practice and maintains that the license in question has been properly acquired.