George County Circuit Clerk Office

About the George County Circuit Clerk's Office

The George County Circuit Clerk is Chad Welford. His official page says he was first elected in 2008 and re-elected in August 2023. The office is elected countywide for a four-year term with no term limit. Staff work at the front of the courthouse, where visitors stop in for directions, guidance, and basic help finding the right counter. The clerk has also held leadership roles in the Mississippi Circuit Clerk Association.

This office is the records hub for the law side of George County courts. It handles marriage licenses, voter registration, absentee voting, jury duty, civil and criminal court files, the judgment roll, and collection of all criminal fines. The county also links a 2026 Circuit Court calendar through this office, so attorneys and self-represented filers can plan around term dates.

Hours, contact details, fax, and the 2026 court calendar all sit in one place on the county's official record for this office.

The official Circuit Clerk page lists the office hours, phone, fax, and the calendar link together.

That page confirms the front-of-courthouse location and the full service list, which is why most marriage-license, jury, and criminal-fine questions start here rather than at the chancery counter.

What the George County Circuit Clerk Does

The Circuit Clerk keeps and manages the records that flow through Circuit Court, the county's main trial court for felonies, larger civil actions, and appeals from County Court. The same office runs several public-service functions that have nothing to do with a lawsuit, like voter rolls and jury summons. That mix is normal for a Mississippi circuit clerk.

• Issue marriage licenses to couples at the courthouse counter
• Register voters and process absentee ballots
• Summon and manage jurors for circuit court terms
• Maintain civil and criminal court case files
• Keep the judgment roll for the county
• Collect all criminal fines ordered by the court

For couples, the marriage-license step starts here, while the matching certified records and any later divorce decree route through the chancery side. The two halves of that story sit on the George County marriage and divorce records page.

Circuit Clerk vs Chancery Clerk: Who Holds What

George County splits its clerk duties between two elected offices in the same building. Knowing which one keeps a record saves a wasted trip to the wrong counter. The Circuit Clerk holds the law-side court files and several civic functions. The Chancery Clerk is the county's official record keeper for land, estates, and family equity matters.

Both offices sit at 355 Cox Street, so a visitor can be a few feet from the right file and still be at the wrong window. When in doubt, call the office that created the record before driving to Lucedale.

The George County Chancery Clerk and Land Records

The Chancery Clerk is Cammie Brannan Byrd, elected to the office in 2004. The county page calls the office the official record keeper for the county, describing its work as recording the present and protecting the county's past. In a typical week the chancery side handles deeds, trust deeds, wills, cancellations, estates, guardianships, conservatorships, divorces, DHS child support, adoptions, and Youth Court files. It also keeps Board of Supervisors minutes, processes drug, alcohol, and mental writs, and accepts delinquent land-tax payments.

Most of the records on the chancery side feed the George County probate and chancery records page, which covers estates, guardianships, and the land-record portal in depth. The Chancery Clerk office shares the courthouse address but runs its own phone line and fax.

The county's chancery land-record search runs through an outside portal hosted under the georgecountyrecords.com domain.

The Chancery Clerk's official land-records inquiry portal indexes recorded George County land instruments.

The portal is a deeds and instruments index, not a general circuit case search, and it warns that the courthouse index remains the official record while the online copy is a convenience.

George County Land Records Search Fields

The chancery land portal exposes a deep set of search fields for title work, parcel lookups, and name searches. Access requires a registered subscription account, and the portal offers monthly and yearly options. The table below lists the most useful public-facing fields a searcher will meet on the inquiry screen.

Results can export to Excel, PDF, or XML, and an instrument-detail panel shows the book, page, file date, page count, and document image. A notify-clerk box lets a searcher flag a missing image or detail directly to the office.

Note: online copies bought through the land portal are final, and a credit-card service fee of 3.5 percent with a $2 minimum applies and is non-refundable.

Property Fraud Alerts in George County

Beyond ordinary searching, the chancery records system carries a fraud-watch tool aimed at property owners. Recording fraud happens when someone files a forged deed or lien against land they do not own, so an early alert can matter.

The records site links a dedicated fraud detection and alert page for George County property owners.

That alert path sits apart from the regular land search, giving owners a way to watch for new filings against a parcel instead of checking the index by hand.

How to Request a Certified Copy

A certified copy carries the clerk's seal and proves a record is a true copy of the office file. Courts, lenders, and agencies usually require certified copies rather than plain printouts. The steps below work for both clerk offices, with the case or instrument detail guiding which counter to use.

1. Identify the record. Have the case number for a court file, or the book and page or instrument number for a land record, before you contact the office.
2. Pick the correct clerk. Use the Circuit Clerk for court cases, marriage licenses, fines, and the judgment roll. Use the Chancery Clerk for land, estates, divorce decrees, and Board minutes.
3. Confirm the copy fee. Call ahead, since the offices do not publish a standard per-page certified-copy fee online.
4. Submit the request. Visit the counter at 355 Cox Street, or contact the office by phone or fax to confirm what it accepts for a mailed or in-person request.
5. Pay and collect. Pay the quoted fee, then pick up the certified copy in person or arrange the office's preferred delivery method.

Note: a divorce decree copy comes from the Chancery Clerk, while the state health department only offers a five-year index search that points back to the county book and page.

Records Request Details to Have Ready

Neither clerk publishes a single universal court-records request form, so a request is office-specific and built around the details you provide. Having the right identifiers ready speeds up any counter, phone, or fax request. The fields below are the information a clerk typically needs to pull the correct file.

Some records are restricted regardless of the form used. Youth Court, adoption, and sealed or expunged files are not ordinary public records, and a court order or lawful right of access is required to view them.

George County Clerk Fees

George County's official pages do not publish a full per-page fee list for the Circuit or Chancery Clerk, so the honest answer is to confirm copy charges with the office before you pay. A few related fees are documented and listed here for context. Treat the unpublished lines as a prompt to call ahead, not as a fixed price.

The credit-card service fee applies only to copies bought online through the chancery land portal. Sheriff fees are shown because incident, accident, and booking records route to the Sheriff's Office rather than to either clerk, and that office requires exact cash.

Electronic Filing and the Clerk's Digital Archive

The chancery side of George County built one of the stronger paper-to-digital records stories in the district. The office was the first Chancery Clerk's Office in its district to implement the Mississippi Electronic Court system, letting attorneys e-file court documents from their own offices. It digitally scanned 31 years of land records and stores backups off site for safety and security.

The archive reaches well beyond modern case files. The Chancery Clerk keeps Board of Supervisors minutes and holds an edition of almost every local newspaper dating back to the 1910s, which gives the courthouse a research role for historians and title searchers alike. The office reports it funded these upgrades from its fee account rather than from new taxes.

Mississippi's open-records framework sits behind all of this. The Mississippi Public Records Act makes public records available for inspection unless another law makes a record exempt, and a denied request can support a complaint through the Ethics Commission. For court administrative records, the Mississippi Judiciary records page explains the separate clerk and appellate record routes.