How to Find Hawaii Court Records (2026)

In person. Go to the Legal Documents Branch (sometimes called the Chief Clerk's Office) of the Circuit, District, or Family Court that heard the case, on the island where it was filed. Public terminals for eCourt Kōkua are generally available at courthouses, and staff can help identify which branch holds a given file. Bring the case number if you have it, or the full names of the parties and an approximate filing date.

By written request. The Judiciary uses standard request forms rather than an informal letter: form 1CP858 for Oahu Circuit and Family Court cases, form 1CP855 for Oahu District Court cases, and form 2DP332 (Neighbor Island Request Form) for Maui, Hawaii, and Kauai County cases. Send the completed form to the Legal Documents Branch in the circuit where the case was filed. The Judiciary's instructions are explicit that you should not send payment with the form — staff mail or email an invoice once the request is processed, and only money orders or certified/cashier's checks are accepted for prepayment before copies are sent.

Online. eCourt Kōkua lets anyone search case information for free from any island, and documents with a PDF icon next to a docket entry can be purchased and downloaded for $3.00 or $0.10 per page, whichever is greater. Confidential cases and sealed documents never appear, no matter which method you use.

Criminal history. For a name-based conviction check rather than a specific case, use eCrim through the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center instead of the court system; it draws on HCJDC's own criminal history files, not court dockets.

Hawaii's Hawaii Court Records Rules (HCRR), adopted by the Supreme Court, govern which case information the Legal Documents Branch can show the public. Rule 9 covers how confidential personal information must be filed separately, and Rule 10.4 governs access to documents that a court has sealed or restricted. The clerks of each court are required to give public access to non-confidential dockets and documents through courthouse public-access terminals, but must restrict confidential, sealed, or restricted records to the parties and their attorneys.

Several categories of case are confidential by default rather than by individual order: Family Court cases involving minors, adoption proceedings, and juvenile justice matters are shielded from public view under Hawaii law, and eCourt Kōkua will not display them at all.

Expungement works differently from sealing. Under HRS §831-3.2, the Attorney General — acting through the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center — can expunge (physically destroy) a non-conviction arrest record on written request. As of July 1, 2025, when HCJDC grants an expungement order that lists a court case number, that order is transmitted automatically to the Judiciary, which then seals or removes the matching case from eCourt Kōkua's public database without a separate request to the court. Before that change, requesters had to separately ask the Judiciary to remove the record after HCJDC granted the expungement.

Court records that are not confidential and not the subject of an expungement order remain public and searchable, including on eCourt Kōkua, unless a judge orders a specific case sealed under Rule 10.4.