Sheriff Court paternity decrees
One of the most common "brick walls" that family historians encounter is where their ancestor is illegitimate. The father may not be named in the birth records, instantly closing off one line of research. Fortunately, there is sometimes a solution, when the mother took the father to court for maintenance payments ("aliment"). The most common approach in the 19th century was to pursue the father in the Sheriff Court. Such cases are generally known as filliation and aliment cases (or affiliation and aliment, sometimes referred to as paternity decrees).
The court's decision was known as a decree, and in order to enforce the court's ruling, these decrees could be extracted. Most Sheriff Courts recorded extracted decrees (for many different types of court rulings, not just filiation and aliment cases) in volumes known as Registers of Extract Decrees or similar. We have now indexed many thousands of these paternity decrees held in the National Records of Scotland, and can retrieve and provide digital images of individual entries.
To order a copy of an extract decree, use the indexes below to find the decree you want. The index now covers almost* all extract decrees between 1828 and 1912 (and in many cases after 1912). There are over 45,000 entries in the index, spread across 593 volumes.
* The index does not include decrees issued in Orkney and Shetland, as these records are not held at the National Records of Scotland.
The court's decision was known as a decree, and in order to enforce the court's ruling, these decrees could be extracted. Most Sheriff Courts recorded extracted decrees (for many different types of court rulings, not just filiation and aliment cases) in volumes known as Registers of Extract Decrees or similar. We have now indexed many thousands of these paternity decrees held in the National Records of Scotland, and can retrieve and provide digital images of individual entries.
To order a copy of an extract decree, use the indexes below to find the decree you want. The index now covers almost* all extract decrees between 1828 and 1912 (and in many cases after 1912). There are over 45,000 entries in the index, spread across 593 volumes.
* The index does not include decrees issued in Orkney and Shetland, as these records are not held at the National Records of Scotland.
