But if the problem is with the index, how do you find the file you need to pull?  I agree that you should always pull the file to review the documents, but when the index is so unreliable, it would be easy to leave the probate court feeling confident that there were no cases you needed to examine.  It would be easy to miss an estate or guardianship all together.

I remember when our recorder first changed to a computer index.  They printed periodic index reports that we could use in the event of a power outage, or if you just wanted to flip through paper to make yourself feel better.  Unfortunately, they lacked the ease of use that they book indexes had and they were pretty much useless (and very time consuming to look through).  After a while, they just stopped printing them and we had a computer-only index (which we still have, of course).  Now we are all at the mercy of the computer and the clerks who enter the data.  If they made a mistake... well... you are just out of luck.

Best,
Robert A. Franco
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