Crawford County Circuit Court Records

Crawford County Circuit Court Overview

Michigan runs three trial courts: circuit, district, and probate. The Circuit Court is the general trial court, and it carries the widest reach of the three. In Crawford County that role belongs to the 46th Circuit Court, based at the courthouse in downtown Grayling. It handles felony criminal cases, civil disputes over $25,000, divorce, and personal protection orders. A personal protection order, often called a PPO, is a court order that restricts contact from someone who has threatened or harmed another person.

The 46th Circuit Court also runs the family division and hears driver's-license restoration cases along with appeals that come up from lower venues and state agencies. Its bench is shared across more than one county, so part of the circuit is geographically split. That structure matters when a reader tries to reach a specific judge, because not every judge sits at the Grayling building every day.

Felonies are the court's signature workload. A felony is a serious crime that can carry more than one year in prison. Those cases do not start here, though. They begin one level down and move up after a step called bindover, which sends the case from the district bench to the circuit bench for trial.

46th Circuit Court Judges and Divisions

The 46th Circuit Court is served by a small bench that splits general circuit work from family-division matters. Chief Circuit Judge Colin G. Hunter leads the court. Judge George J. Mertz shares the general circuit docket, and because the circuit spans more than one county his chambers include a Gaylord office. Judge Monte J. Burmeister carries the family division, and he also serves as the county's chief probate and district court judge. The judge biographies are posted on the Circuit 46 judge bios page.

The table below lists each judge, the role or division that judge holds, and the contact or location point that matters most for the public. All circuit filings and legal records run through the circuit court clerk at the Grayling courthouse.

Circuit filings and the legal-records desk are reached through the circuit court clerk at 989-344-3206. When a case is closed, the county routes those files to Court Administrator Angie Cragg at 989-344-3882. Support, parenting time, and custody enforcement questions go to the Friend of the Court at 989-344-3272.

Circuit Court vs. District Court vs. Probate Court

Crawford County's three trial courts each own a distinct slice of the caseload. The 46th Circuit Court takes the top of the pyramid: felonies, high-value civil claims, and family matters. The 87-C District Court is the busy lower court where most criminal cases first appear and where small claims and traffic tickets live. Probate Court handles estates and protective arrangements. The comparison below breaks down how the three benches divide the work.

The 87-C District Court is where a felony case is arraigned and where a preliminary examination decides whether enough evidence exists to move forward. If it does, the case is bound over to the 46th Circuit Court for trial. That single handoff is the reason the two courts are so tightly linked in Crawford County.

Note: Probate Court itself hears no adult crimes, but its family-division ties place juvenile delinquency and mental-health matters within the broader circuit and probate structure.

How a Case Moves Through the Crawford County System

A felony case in Crawford County does not stay in one courtroom from start to finish. It climbs a defined ladder, and each rung has a job. The district bench opens the file, the circuit bench tries it, and the state appellate courts review it if a party challenges the result. Seeing the full path helps a reader know which court holds a record at any given stage.

Felony flow: District Court arraignment and preliminary exam › Bindover › Circuit Court felony trial › Michigan Court of Appeals › Michigan Supreme Court

The 87-C District Court handles the first appearance, sets bond, and holds the preliminary examination. Once a defendant is bound over, the 46th Circuit Court takes the case for arraignment on the information, pretrial motions, plea or trial, and sentencing. A party who loses can appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals, the state's intermediate appellate court. The Michigan Supreme Court sits at the top and reviews a smaller set of cases by leave.

Civil flow: Complaint filed in Circuit Court › Answer › Discovery › Motions and mediation › Trial › Judgment › Appeal to the Court of Appeals

Civil disputes over $25,000, divorce, and PPO petitions open directly in the 46th Circuit Court rather than climbing from below. Appeals from the district and probate benches, and from certain state agencies, also feed into the circuit court through its legal-records desk before any further appeal to the Court of Appeals.

Searching Crawford County Circuit Court Records

Michigan runs one statewide public case-search platform called MiCOURT. The county points readers to it as the main way to look up circuit cases online. You can open the tool through the MiCOURT case search portal, and Crawford County exposes a direct route into the 46th Circuit index with the Crawford circuit case-search link. That route drops you straight into circuit cases, so felony and larger civil files surface without extra menu steps.

Have a few details ready before you start. A case number returns the fastest result. A party name works when you do not have the number, and an attorney name or bar number helps when you track counsel. The portal loads through your browser, so a current browser and a stable connection matter. The steps below run a clean circuit search.

1. Open the MiCOURT case search portal and accept the public-access terms.
2. Follow the Crawford County 46th Circuit route to filter to this county's circuit cases.
3. Pick a search type: case number, party name, attorney name, or bar number.
4. Type the details exactly as they appear and submit the search.
5. Open the matching case to read the register of actions, docket entries, and hearing dates.

Circuit hearings are also viewable live. The county directs the public to YouTube channels for Judge Colin G. Hunter and Judge George J. Mertz to watch circuit proceedings remotely. For the schedule behind a case, the county court docket calendar shows when a matter is set before you pull the full file. When a record is not online, the fallback is the circuit clerk or a records request.

Circuit Court Clerk and In-Person Access

Not every circuit file lives online. Older paper records, certified copies, and non-digitized cases often mean a call to the clerk or a trip to Grayling. Crawford County keeps essentially one courthouse building, so the circuit, district, and probate divisions all share the same address. Circuit legal records flow through the circuit court clerk function inside the combined county clerk office. Bring a case number if you have one, plus a photo ID and payment for any copy fees.

Route your question to the right desk for the fastest answer. Closed circuit matters go to Court Administrator Angie Cragg at 989-344-3882, family-division questions go to the family line at 989-344-3239, and support or custody enforcement goes to the Friend of the Court at 989-344-3272. When a record is neither online nor held by a court desk, the county's Freedom of Information Act channel is the fallback. Submit a request through the county FOIA hub, which posts the request form, a cost worksheet, and the appeal process. FOIA cannot force release of a sealed, juvenile, or otherwise confidential court file.

Federal Courts Serving Crawford County

Some cases tied to Crawford County never touch the circuit bench at all. Federal crimes, civil-rights suits, bankruptcy, and federal appeals run through the federal system instead. Crawford County sits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, and the county falls in that court's Northern Division, whose most relevant courthouse is in Bay City. The federal district court's home page sits at the Eastern District of Michigan court site.

That court hears the federal matters a state circuit court cannot, which is why a Crawford County resident may end up in Bay City rather than Grayling for a federal case. Federal case records are not searched through MiCOURT. They are viewed through PACER, the national federal court records system, and the district court explains the process on its records page.

The Eastern District posts guidance for the public on how to reach court records and what registration PACER requires. You can read it on the Eastern District court records page.

Federal records are not free the way many state files are, so PACER charges per page under the usual federal thresholds and requires an account. Attorneys and parties file and pull documents electronically through the court's CM/ECF system rather than at a public counter.

The electronic filing and case-management portal for the district is CM/ECF, which handles both e-filing and document access for registered users. It is hosted at the Eastern District CM/ECF portal.

That portal is where a federal case file lives after it is opened, and it is the electronic counterpart to the circuit clerk's legal-records desk on the state side. Appeals from the Eastern District go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which is the federal appellate court that reviews Michigan district-court decisions.