Over the past few years, the divorce rate in the United States had gone up. Three out of every five marriages in the United States today are doomed to end in divorce. There are many reasons for the bond of marriage to fail. That strong bond, formed by a mutual feeling of love, trust, and commitment by and between the parties to the celebration, may indeed be strong enough to weather through some of the toughest challenges that could be brought to bear against it, but with the right set of circumstance and just the right amount of pressure, even that bond could not stand.

Divorced people, however, are not doomed to live the rest of their lives alone just because they had gone the often lengthy and tedious process of obtaining a decree that would finalize the end of their marriage. Lives go on after the decree and occasionally, a divorced person may find someone that he or she could build that same bond with and might once more want to try the married life. For the person who would want to marry someone who had been divorced once before, however, it would be good advice to check the existence of the divorce of their would-be spouse.
Divorce records are kept and maintained by local authorities because of this reason and because the maintenance of the same is mandated by law. In the state of Texas, these divorce records are considered public records, and under a statute, the Texas Public Information Act, they are considered to be available to the public.

The same statute governs the procedure on how to obtain a certified copy of the divorce records. In Texas, divorce records are under the official custody of the district clerk of the county where the divorce was granted. Under the Texas Public Information Act, the procedure to obtain the copy would start with a written request addressed to the district clerk of the county where the divorce was finalized. This request must contain as much information as could be provided to assist the district clerk in their search for the records. Equally important, any fee must be settled within ten days of the written request for payment being written. Failure to settle the outstanding fee would automatically result to the request being considered as withdrawn.

In the state of Texas, the state government could not provide a certified copy of a divorce record, but at the same time, through the Texas Department of State Health Services, the state could provide divorce verification. This verification informs the searcher only if the divorce existed or not. The procedure starts either through the internet with the use of a credit card or through the mail with the use of a form that is free to download from the website of the Department of State Health Services. This verification procedure costs twenty dollars and could take anywhere between ten to fifteen days to complete.

Finally, the easier option may be to take the search online. The exponential growth of computers and the internet over the past few decades had not only allowed government offices to be more efficient in their keeping of records, it also allowed people to do their search through the World Wide Web without having to interact with an often slow government. Specialized online search databases available through the web could provide a searcher with the information that he or she requires, and often, this is not limited to divorce records, in near instantaneous times, and often free of charge. As an added bonus, this easy to use database does not require the searcher to leave the comforts of their homes or even to fall in line.