Search Stevens County District Court

Stevens District Court Overview

Kansas District Courts are general jurisdiction trial courts. The state court structure map for Stevens County identifies District Court as the primary trial court, the Clerk of the District Court as the court-record clerk, municipal court as the lower court type, the Probate Division of the District Court as the probate court name, and the Kansas Court of Appeals as the intermediate appellate court. There is no separate county court at law, justice of the peace court, or standalone probate courthouse in the Stevens County state-court structure.

Stevens County is part of the 26th Judicial District with Grant, Haskell, Morton, Seward, and Stanton counties. Local court business is centered at the Stevens County Courthouse, 200 E. 6th, Hugoton, Kansas 67951. The Kansas Judicial Branch district listing and the county court page publish the court phone as 620-544-2484 and fax as 620-544-2528. Court office hours are 8:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.

District Court Staff Table

The local court page identifies judges and staff connected to the 26th Judicial District. Some judges serve from other counties in the district, so the table separates role and contact details instead of implying that every officer sits only in Hugoton.

District and Municipal Courts

Stevens County court users should not look for a county court or justice court. The meaningful local comparison is District Court versus Municipal Court, with federal courts included only when the case is federal. Hugoton Municipal Court handles city ordinance and municipal traffic matters, and the city government page identifies Damon Simmons as Judge of the Municipal Court. An appeal from municipal court has a Stevens County District Court fee category, so city matters can still create a district court record later.

Stevens Case Flow Diagram

Court records become easier to read when the path is clear. A case begins with a filing, citation, petition, complaint, information, or probate petition. The docket then grows through hearings, notices, orders, payment entries, and final disposition. The public may see some events in CaseSearch, but sealed cases, sealed documents, and confidential document types remain unavailable through public portals or courthouse terminals.

Criminal flow: Law-enforcement event or complaint › first appearance or arraignment › prosecutor-filed charges › motions and hearings › plea or trial › disposition and sentence › probation, payment, appeal, or expungement activity.

Civil flow: Petition or claim filed › summons and service › answer or default › motions and hearings › judgment or dismissal › collection, satisfaction, appeal, or post-judgment filing.

Probate flow: Petition, will, affidavit, or descent filing › notice and hearing activity › appointment or order › inventory, accounting, transfer, or closing events › recorded land instruments when needed.

Stevens District Case Types

The District Court fee list shows the breadth of local case work. Civil files include damage suits, limited actions, small claims, foreign judgments, tax warrants, personal property tax, hospital liens, lis pendens, mechanic's liens, and oil and gas mechanic's liens. Criminal files include felony, misdemeanor, murder or manslaughter, recognizance, expungement, bond, arraignment, plea, disposition, sentencing, and probation entries. Family files include divorce, paternity, post-decree motions, and related orders.

Probate is also part of the District Court structure. Stevens County fee categories include probate estates, probate trust, filing will and affidavit, probate descent, refusal to grant letters, termination of joint tenancy, termination of life estate, and guardianship or conservatorship. Juvenile, adoption, care-and-treatment, child in need of care, juvenile offender, and mental-health categories are present in the fee list too, but access is more restricted by statute, rule, or court order.

District Court Access Rules

Public access starts with Kansas District Court Records CaseSearch. Kansas Judicial Branch material says public district court records became available through a statewide online portal as Kansas courts moved to centralized case management. Records not available remotely may be available through courthouse terminals, while sealed cases and sealed records are not available through the portal or terminal. The local clerk remains the practical fallback for older, non-digitized, copy, certification, and file-location questions.

Access is shaped by Kansas law and court rules. K.S.A. 45-218 gives a public-record inspection rule with a response duty, but court records also rely on Kansas Supreme Court Rule 22 and case-specific confidentiality. Juvenile records are governed by K.S.A. 38-2309, and juvenile expungement by K.S.A. 38-2312. Adult expungement can involve K.S.A. 21-6614 or arrest-record rules. Adoption, sealed, expunged, victim-identifying, personal identifier, and some family materials may be withheld.

The Kansas juvenile records statute is one of the assigned District Court sources.

Juvenile access rules are a good example of why public case-search results should not be treated as the full court file.

The Kansas juvenile expungement statute is also assigned to the District Court page.

Expungement changes public access, but it does not mean every agency record disappears for every statutory purpose.

Divorce and Federal Context

Divorce filings are District Court matters in Stevens County. The fee list gives Divorce / Paternity at $195 and Post Decree Motion at $62. K.S.A. 23-2703 addresses Kansas divorce residency, and K.S.A. 23-2708 addresses hearing timing. A KDHE divorce certificate is not the same as the District Court decree, so court users who need custody, property, support, or decree terms should request the court record from the clerk.

The Kansas divorce residency statute is assigned to this District Court page because divorce is a District Court case type.

Residency and timing statutes explain where divorce filings belong, while the clerk supplies the case record and certified copies.

The Kansas divorce hearing timing statute is the second assigned divorce statute image.

For federal matters, Stevens County is in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, while bankruptcy cases go to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Kansas. Federal records use PACER or federal clerk channels, not the Stevens County District Court clerk.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Kansas source is assigned for this federal boundary.

Federal bankruptcy records may affect local litigants or landowners, but they are not filed in the county District Court case system.

Note: Official research did not locate a Stevens County specialty court page, so no local drug court, veterans court, or mental-health court is named here.