Search Yakima County Superior Court Records

Yakima County Superior Court Overview

Superior Court is Washington's general-jurisdiction trial court. In Yakima County, it hears the heavy cases that the lower courts cannot. That means felony criminal matters, large civil suits, family law, probate, guardianship, and juvenile cases. It also hears appeals that come up from the District and Municipal Courts. If a case is serious, it most likely lands here.

State law sets 8 Superior Court judges for Yakima County. Each judge is elected to a four-year term. The judges sit in numbered departments and share the workload across civil, criminal, family, and probate dockets. The court sits in downtown Yakima at 128 N 2nd Street, Room 314. Court Administration handles requests such as Zoom attendance for a hearing. The county Courts and Judges page lists the judges and their terms for each court level.

Appeals from this court do not stay in the county. They go up to the Washington Court of Appeals, Division III, District 3, which sits in Spokane.

Yakima County Superior Court Judges and Departments

The court runs through eight judicial departments, each led by an elected judge. The departments are not split strictly by subject; judges rotate across civil, criminal, family, and probate calendars as the docket needs. When you read a case file, the judge name helps you match the matter to a department. The table below lists the current judges from the county courts and judges page, with the term year each shows.

Judges stand for election, so the names and terms can change over time. Always confirm the sitting judge for a case through the court or the county courts page before a hearing.

The Yakima County Courthouse

Superior Court sits inside the main county courthouse in downtown Yakima. Many court offices share the same street address, so the room number matters as much as the street. Superior Court is in Room 314. Family Court is also in Room 314, with its own facilitator line. The Clerk of Superior Court, which keeps the case files, is one floor of rooms away in Room 323. Route to the street address, not a department name, since several offices share the building.

Superior Court hearings have resumed in person. A person who needs to appear by Zoom should contact Court Administration first. The county courts pages also offer a Select Language control and Spanish phone lines for language access.

Superior Court vs District Court vs Municipal Court

Washington splits trial work across three court levels in Yakima County. Superior Court is the general trial court for the biggest cases. District Court and the city Municipal Courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, which means they handle smaller, lower-level matters. The comparison below shows how the three levels divide the work.

Yakima County District Court also handles name changes and antiharassment or stalking protection orders, and it provides court services for Union Gap, Grandview, Mabton, Tieton, and Moxee. Probate and guardianship are not held in a separate court; they are Superior Court matters kept by the Clerk.

How a Case Moves Through the System

A case does not always end where it starts. Many cases begin in a lower court and move up only on appeal. Others start in Superior Court because of the charge or the dollar amount. The flow below shows the usual path through the Washington court system for matters tied to Yakima County.

Case flow: District / Municipal Court › Superior Court › Court of Appeals Division III › Washington Supreme Court

A felony or a large civil suit is filed straight in Superior Court. A traffic ticket or a misdemeanor starts in District or Municipal Court, and a party who loses can appeal to Superior Court. From Superior Court, an appeal goes to the Court of Appeals, Division III, in Spokane, which can affirm, reverse, modify, or remand the case. The Washington Supreme Court is the last stop and takes cases by discretionary or direct review.

How to Search Yakima County Superior Court Records

Superior Court case records are searched through two official tools. The first is the statewide Washington Courts case search, which indexes cases from municipal, district, superior, and appellate courts across the state. The second is the Odyssey Portal, which holds the most current Superior Court files. For Yakima Superior Court matters, the state directs users to Odyssey for up-to-date information. The free statewide search is a good start, but it warns that some dockets, judgments, or document links may not show correctly.

To run a search, you pick a court level, choose Yakima County Superior Court, and select a case type. The Superior Court case types are Civil, Criminal, Domestic, and Probate or Guardianship. The steps below follow the official workflow.

1. Open the Washington Courts case search and accept the terms.
2. Choose the Superior Courts level and select Yakima County Superior Court.
3. Search by name, case number, or business name, and add a case type or year to narrow results.
4. For full and current details, open Odyssey Portal or ask the Clerk for the complete record.

A name search returns columns for case number, file date, type, location, and party name. Click a case number to open the record. The case then breaks into Case information, Party, Disposition Events, and Events and Hearings. More field-by-field help sits on the court records page.

Civil, Family, Criminal, and Juvenile Work

Superior Court covers four broad streams of work. Civil cases include contracts, commercial disputes, property rights, evictions, injunctions, torts, malpractice, and damages claims. The court also hears agency appeal board records and domestic violence matters. Family law cases cover divorce, legal separation, child custody, non-parental custody, and parentage. The criminal stream handles felony charges that the State brings. Juvenile matters and dependency cases are handled with extra confidentiality under state law.

Probate and guardianship round out the court's load. These cover estates, wills, and the care of people who cannot manage their own affairs. The Clerk of Superior Court keeps the files for all of these streams. Juvenile court services tie to the Juvenile Justice Center at 1728 Jerome Avenue, while the courtroom work stays at the main courthouse. Some of these case types stay confidential. Dependency, mental illness, and adoption files are sealed, and paternity files are closed until the parentage order is entered.

Court of Appeals Division III

Yakima County sits in the Washington Court of Appeals, Division III, District 3, based in Spokane. This is the intermediate appellate court. It reviews decisions from Yakima County Superior Court and can affirm, reverse, modify, or send a case back for more work. It does not hold new trials. It reads the record and the briefs, then rules on whether the law was applied right.

Above the Court of Appeals sits the Washington Supreme Court, the highest court in the state. It hears cases by discretionary review or by direct review in certain matters. Most case records still trace back to the trial court file kept by the Clerk, even after an appeal.

District and Municipal Courts in Yakima County

The lower courts handle the day-to-day matters that never reach Superior Court. Yakima County District Court hears traffic and non-traffic infractions, misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, small claims up to $5,000, civil cases up to $100,000, name changes, and antiharassment or stalking protection orders. It runs from the Yakima courthouse and a second office in Grandview at 1313 W. Wine Country Road.

City Municipal Courts handle matters under city law, such as city ordinance violations, city traffic, and local misdemeanors. The county lists several, including Granger, Moxee, Selah, Sunnyside, Toppenish, Union Gap, Wapato, Yakima, and Zillah. A loss in one of these lower courts can be appealed up to Superior Court.

Related Yakima County Resources

For dockets and case lookup, see court records and court dockets. For copies, certified documents, and the case-file custodian, see the Clerk of Superior Court.