Vol. 9, No. 10 November 2013
Acceptable Forms of Payment Update
As stated in last month’s Brief, the Clerk’s Office will begin making changes to the acceptable forms of payment after the first of the year. Note that law firms, attorneys, process servers and runner services account for the majority of the filing fees and services at the Clerk’s Office and will not make a complete transition on January 1. The Clerk’s Office continues to review options for working with these customers to move toward guaranteed forms of payment such as cash, wire transfer, or credit and debit cards with the cardholder’s signature and away from personal and business checks. These customers may start seeing changes in the first quarter of 2014, but not on January 1.
What will be enforced on January 1, 2014 for all court customers, including law firms and attorneys, is payment by cash or wire transfer for posting non-criminal bonds in most situations, including performance bonds and appeal bonds. The public, including self-represented parties, will no longer be able to write personal checks for fees and services after January 1, 2014.
Details on depositing funds with the Clerk that are held in trust, such as criminal bail bonds, cash bonds, civil and child support arrest warrants, and probate bonds, are available on the “Trust/Bond Matters” page of the Clerk’s website at http://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/moneymatters.asp.
Juvenile Electronic Court Record (ECR)
The fourth phase of the Juvenile Electronic Court Record (ECR) was released on October 28, 2013. Phase IV was the final phase of a year-long project to move the juvenile case type toward electronic records.
The last phase includes scanning newly-filed documents in delinquency (JV) cases. Paper files will no longer be created for new JV cases and existing cases will include both newly-filed electronic documents as of October 8, 2013 and all previously filed paper documents through October 27, 2013. If you represent a client in the juvenile case type, make sure your review of records includes the electronic court record at one of the two juvenile facilities. The images of juvenile records are not available through the Clerk’s ECR Online website.
There are no changes to the confidentiality of Juvenile Court records. Information regarding Juvenile Court records can be found on the Clerk’s website at http://www.clerkofcourt.maricopa.gov/juvenile.asp.
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