For Civil, Small Claims and Probate Estates Research, Window 5 is located at the Civil Division Clerk's Office in The City Towers Building at 801 10^th Street, 4^th floor; Modesto.  The window is devoted specifically to research of these case types. The window is open between the hours of 8:00 am and 11:00 am.

All active civil files and most active small claims and probate estate files are located at this office, unless they are currently unavailable due to hearings, orders or case processing. Most inactive cases are either on microfilm, microfiche, and imaging or are stored in other locations. Those that are stored at other locations may take several days to retrieve for availability for viewing. In those instances, a research file location request will be taken and you will be contacted when the file is available for viewing. If you visit our research area and are not local, every effort will be made to accommodate you with same day availability of files if at all possible.  If files are at an off site location, a research fee will apply and there will be at least a 24 hour turn-a-round.  There is a limit of 30 civil and small claims files, and 5 probate estate files for viewing at any one time.

You will need to have a case number.  If you do not have a case number, cases between years 1972 and 1995 require that you search the microfiche indices to obtain the case number, otherwise a $15.00 research fee will apply. *For general name searches that encompass all years that this office provides for you the $15.00 research fee also applies.

*The microfiche indices are located at 1100 I Street, Family Law Research Window.   The court's Case Index is also available at this website under Case Index Lookup.

Requests for research information can also be made by mail. Please include the $15.00 research fee (if applicable) with your written request, directing the request to the appropriate division(s). Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope. For requests for copies, please include the appropriate fee per page. If you do not know how many pages are included, you may send a signed blank check noting:  "Not to exceed...." (indicate an estimated amount). **

Copy fees are as follows:
Per page: ...$0.50