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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Utah’s Xchange court record fees will rise on July 1.
- Search fees increase from $0.15 to $0.35, and downloads double to $1.
- Fee hikes aim to offset a shortfall in Xchange funding.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utahns might want to look up online court records to track a case they’re involved in, background check a date or check into a neighbor’s history before letting their kids play next door. All of that will soon cost more.
Users logging on to Xchange, the state’s online court filing system, will see a notice informing them that fees to use it are set to increase on July 1. According to the notice, searches will increase from $0.15 each to $0.35 — a 133% increase. The current cost of downloading a document, which is $0.50, will double to $1. And the cost to set up a guest account will also double, going from $5 to $10. The $40 monthly subscription fee will stay the same and still include up to 500 searches each month.
All those fees go toward paying for the state to run Xchange, according to Tania Mashburn, director of communication with Utah State Courts.
“The fees we were charging for Xchange were significantly lower than what it takes to run the program,” she said. “In 2023, there was a deficit of $1.3 million for Xchange, and then in 2024, that went up to almost $1.5 million that there’s a shortfall. So all we’re doing is bringing that up to try to break even on it.”
When asked why Xchange isn’t already funded through taxpayer funds, Mashburn explained that it’s considered an extra service.
“Xchange is an additional sort of program and benefit that we provide to Utahns,” she said. “If you go to any other state, they don’t have a program like Xchange or service like Xchange. … Xchange is one of those kind of bonus areas where we have to charge just so it can pay for itself.”
Mashburn said low-income users can save money on court records by physically going to the courthouse, where they can access copies of court filings for a much cheaper rate that covers the cost of printing materials.
According to the Utah State Courts, Xchange fees have not increased since 2021, when search fees increased from $0.10 to $0.15. The cost of downloading a document has not increased in the last 10 years. The one-time account setup fee for monthly subscribers hasn’t increased in the last decade either and remains $25.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.