Court records of Paternity claims

[angusg]

I am posting this in Kincardine but my questions are
the same for all Scottish Counties.

I have in our Family tree  Illegitimate children
some have had their name changed as a result of a
Sherriff Court order to the Registrar.
In other words an RCE (Register of Corrected Entries).

Is it possible to find the records on which the Sherriff or Under Sherriff
made his decision?

I tried at Forfar Sherriff Court and they shunted me of to national Archives with
nothing specific to help locate the records, if any.

Any advice on how to get more details than are in the RCE's would be appreciated.

Yours Aye,
Angus

[ev]

Hi Angus 

I found this and thought it may be of interest to a wider audience so I'll place a link here

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=581510.new

ev

Added - also found this -

http://www.talkingscot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=9838

[lizci]

You can search the NAS catalogue for Forfar Sheriff Court - there should be a list of the records that exist for that court, along with the dates they cover.  (The RCE should give a date - sometimes the action was taken shortly after the child's birth, but sometimes it was a couple of years later!) 

The Decree (sometimes called decreet) book is a good place to look for the judgement .. Minute and Act books can also be useful.  Take a note of the catalogue reference numbers for the records you want.  If you're able to go to Edinburgh to look them up, you can order the books in advance by email. 

You can look through the books for the dates you want, but there will probably be a handwritten index at the back.  The judgement will give names of pursuer and defender, where they lived, father's occupation, gender and date of birth of child, and the award made to the mother (inlying expenses, aliment, legal costs).   It's worth checking the index for later dates too - I've found a mother who took action two years apart, she won her case both times but the father still denied paternity and must have refused to pay.

Lizci