What an asset investigation contains, and what it cannot

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The same material, read aloud and told more loosely than it is written. Nothing is said in it that this page does not also say.

What an investigation contains

Three kinds of record do most of the work: property in the land records, lenders and liens in the filings, and names tied to assets in court files and registries.

Start with land. Every Florida county recorder must keep a public online index of recorded documents, searchable by grantor, grantee and party names, with images available on request. Fla. Stat. 28.2221(2)(a)¹ requires it. And a name stays in that index even where a home address is withheld: the recorder removes the street address portion from display and leaves the name where a searcher can find it. Fla. Stat. 28.2221(2)(b) draws the line exactly there.

Then the filings that show who lent money against what. A financing statement is sufficient only if it names the debtor, names the secured party and indicates the collateral. Fla. Stat. 679.5021(1)² and UCC 9-502(a)³ say the same thing in two states. So a UCC search returns the lenders a debtor has pledged assets to, by name.

Court files and registries do the rest. In Florida a record in a court file stays open to inspection unless a court closed it or the statute lists it as an exception, and it is state policy that state, county and municipal records are open to any person. Fla. Stat. 119.0714(1)⁴, Fla. Stat. 119.01(1)⁵ and Fla. Stat. 119.07(1)(a)⁶ set that out. Aircraft and vessels have their own registries: the FAA publishes its aircraft registration database for anyone to download, and under 46 C.F.R. Part 67⁷ any person may ask the Coast Guard for a vessel's Abstract of Title or its Certificate of Ownership.

A report of this kind is a set of leads, not proof of who owns what. An aircraft registration makes the point for all of them. Under 49 U.S.C. 44103(c)⁸ a certificate of registration is not evidence of ownership in a proceeding where ownership is in issue. It tells you where to look, not what a court will find.

What drives the price

No figure appears here, and the reason is simple: a price is not a provision of any statute, and this page will not invent one.

What separates a short report from a long one is scope. How many names and entities. How many counties, and how many states. And whether the property sits behind a trust or a company, which turns one search into several.

Half of a scope is the entity list. A debtor who holds everything in his own name is a day's work. The same debtor behind four LLCs in three states is a different report, and the difference is counted in searches, not adjectives.

What it cannot include

Some things an investigator cannot put in the report are not merely unavailable. They are crimes to obtain, and the exposure reaches the person who asked.

Bank account details pulled from a bank by a lie are the clearest case. Federal law makes it a violation to obtain a financial institution's customer information about another person by a false statement to the bank or its customer, or by handing the bank a forged or stolen document. 15 U.S.C. 6821(a)⁹ and its means subsections say so. Asking someone to get that information, knowing they will get it by those means, is itself a violation under 15 U.S.C. 6821(b). A knowing and intentional violation carries a fine, up to 5 years in prison, or both. 15 U.S.C. 6823(a)¹⁰ sets the ceiling.

The one carve-out does not help a judgment creditor who is after money. 15 U.S.C. 6821(g) lets a state-licensed private investigator reach bank information only to collect child support from a person a court has adjudged delinquent, where a court order or judgment authorizes it. That is the whole exception tied to enforcing a judgment, and it is about child support.

Motor vehicle records carry their own rule. Under 18 U.S.C. 2722(a)¹¹ it is unlawful to obtain personal information from a motor vehicle record for a use the DPPA does not permit, and 18 U.S.C. 2722(b) bars obtaining it by a false representation. The execution and enforcement of judgments is a permitted use under 18 U.S.C. 2721(b)(4)¹², and a licensed investigative agency may receive DMV information for any purpose the subsection permits under 18 U.S.C. 2721(b)(8). Step outside those and a knowing violation is a crime under 18 U.S.C. 2723(a)¹³, and the person the record concerns may sue under 18 U.S.C. 2724(a)¹⁴.

A debt collector has a further limit. Under 15 U.S.C. 1692e(10)¹⁵ a debt collector who uses false or deceptive means to obtain information about a consumer violates the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. That rule binds debt collectors as that statute defines them, which is not every investigator, but it is worth knowing which hat is on.

Some things are not in the Florida public file to begin with. Bank account numbers held by a Florida agency are exempt from public inspection, court files included. Fla. Stat. 119.071(5)(b)¹⁶ and Fla. Stat. 119.0714(1) put those numbers out of reach of a records request. So an honest report on banks says which banks appear as lenders or parties, and stops there. For what a public record does and does not hold about a debtor's banking, see where banks appear in the public record.

What this does not cover

This is a description of what a lawful report is built from, not advice about your matter or about any one investigator.

Nobody writing this is a lawyer and none of it is advice. Whether a particular search is worth running, and whether a particular investigator is working inside the lines, are questions for counsel with your file open. This page says nothing about state investigator licensing, which is a separate question it does not reach.

What a page can do is narrower. It can tell you how to read the report you paid for: go line by line, and for each one ask which record it came from. A line that cannot name its source is a line worth a question.