About the St. Tammany Parish Clerk of Court
Jessica Brewster serves as Clerk of Court for St. Tammany Parish. The Louisiana Clerks of Court Association (LCCA) dates her tenure to July 2024, and the welcome letter on the clerk's own website is signed with her full name, Jessica Jenkins Brewster. The office is elected parishwide for four years under Article V, Section 28 of the Louisiana Constitution, which also makes every district clerk the parish recorder of conveyances, mortgages, and other acts. State election law adds a third job: the clerk is the chief election officer of St. Tammany, and the clerk's site notes that she chairs the parish Board of Election Supervisors.
The Census Bureau counted 264,573 St. Tammany residents in its 2020 base, and the July 2024 estimate climbed to 277,615. The parish covers about 845 square miles of land on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, plus roughly 250 square miles of water. It dates to 1810, when it became one of the first four Florida Parishes organized after the United States annexed West Florida. Its namesake is Tamanend, a Lenape (Delaware) chief, not a Catholic saint.
The clerk works out of more than one building. The main office sits inside the St. Tammany Parish Justice Center in Covington, a Slidell Annex handles a shorter list of services, and a separate Elections Office operates on North Jefferson Avenue in Covington. Contact details for St. Tammany's neighbors and every other parish clerk are collected in the Louisiana Clerks of Court directory.
Court records in St. Tammany Parish
Every civil and criminal case in the 22nd Judicial District Court that arises in St. Tammany is filed with this clerk. The Civil Department takes new suits and later pleadings, prepares cost estimates, processes protective orders, handles jury selection and summonses, and supplies copies of civil and domestic suits, successions, and tutorships. It also processes civil and criminal appeals. The Criminal Department provides copies of misdemeanor, felony, non-support, and traffic records, defendant histories, and criminal background sheets, and it receives expungement filings.
For remote access to civil and criminal case files, the clerk points users to re:SearchLA, a portal that requires its own sign-up. According to the clerk's home page (October 2026), sealed cases and sealed documents are not available for online viewing in re:SearchLA at this time because of technical issues, and a name or docket search for a sealed case returns "no match for search." The clerk asks anyone who gets that notice and believes the case may be sealed to call the Covington office, and says such records may be accessed in person there, subject to applicable law and court orders. An empty result, in other words, does not prove that no case exists.
Civil e-filing runs through CottFile, both for new suits and for subsequent pleadings. The clerk explains that most e-filed documents become the originals, with an exception for certain originals that Louisiana law does not allow to be e-filed (the site cites Code of Civil Procedure article 253 and R.S. 9:2602 and 9:2603). Protective orders carry a practical deadline: the clerk will not process them after 3:00 p.m., and the website refers anyone who needs immediate help to Safe Harbor at 985-626-5740.
Louisiana's Public Records Law gives any person the right to a copy of a public record, subject to listed exceptions, and the custodian has to prove a record is exempt. Juvenile proceedings are confidential under Children's Code article 412, and an expunged record is removed from public access, though it is not destroyed. For how these rules work across parishes, see the guides to Louisiana court records and criminal records.
Land, mortgage, and property records
Land work is split between two departments. Recording takes in conveyances, mortgages, cancellations, marriage contracts, powers of attorney, maps, articles of incorporation, certified judgments, and UCC filings, and it issues mortgage and lien certificates. Land Records handles research and copies of acts of sale, mortgages, judgments of possession, cancellations, property settlements, liens, military discharges, name changes, maps, and land surveys, along with property tax archives.
Online, the clerk moved to a new Land Records Portal on Cott's RECORDhub, which went live on Monday, July 27, 2026. RECORDhub also covers archives and marriage licenses. According to the clerk's website (viewed October 2026), 24-hour access costs $25.00, a 30-day single-user subscription is $50.00, and an annual five-user plan is $600.00, with printing at $1.00 per page. The older land records site stays up until December 31, 2026, and since January 1, 2026 card payments on it carry a 2.75% processing fee. eClerks LA's free activity alerts, linked from the clerk's site, can watch for new recordings under your name or on your property.
Filers can e-record through CSC, ePN, or Simplifile. Older paper lives in the Archives Department, whose holdings include conveyances from 1810 to 1921, mortgages from 1825 to 1959, civil suits from 1810 to June 1987, successions from 1810 to 1996, and criminal records from 1810 to 1976. Collectors of local history will also find citizenship and naturalization papers from 1817 to 1907 and marks and brands from 1813 to 1965.
Civil Code article 3346 sends an act affecting immovable property to the records of the parish where the land lies. A tract along the Tangipahoa line may need a second search with the Tangipahoa Parish Clerk of Court, and land near the Washington Parish boundary can turn up in the books of the Washington Parish Clerk of Court in Franklinton. The Louisiana property records guide explains conveyance and mortgage searching in more depth.
Marriage licenses and family records
The St. Tammany clerk issues marriage licenses through its Personal Documents Department on the ground level of the Justice Center, and the Slidell Annex takes applications too. Both accept applications from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekdays, according to the clerk. Its 2026 marriage license sheet (viewed October 2026) lists a $27.50 license fee plus $5.00 per attachment, a $2 per page photocopy charge unless applicants bring their own copies, $12.00 for a certified copy of a recorded license, and $10.00 to correct an error discovered after leaving the office. Cash and cards are accepted. The Personal Documents page adds that the application must be printed on legal-size paper.
Applicants bring valid identification, certified birth certificates or birth cards, Social Security numbers, information about their parents, and a divorce decree or death certificate for the most recent prior marriage. State law sets the timing. The ceremony cannot happen until 24 hours after issuance (a judge or authorized justice of the peace may waive that for serious reasons), the license expires after 30 days, and the clerk notes the wedding must take place in Louisiana. The officiant then returns the signed copies to the issuing clerk within ten days.
Beyond licenses, Personal Documents sells certified Louisiana birth certificates and birth cards and Louisiana death certificates for deaths from July 9, 2012 onward. Archived marriage licenses from 1810 through 1969 sit in the Archives Department. Divorce, custody, and support judgments are part of the court record, and a certified divorce decree comes from the clerk of the parish where the divorce was granted, not from state Vital Records. See marriage records and divorce records for the statewide picture.
Courts that serve St. Tammany Parish
The 22nd Judicial District Court serves both St. Tammany and Washington parishes, holding court at the Justice Center in Covington and at the Washington Parish Courthouse in Franklinton. According to the court's website, Divisions A through J hear civil and criminal matters, while Divisions K and L are family court divisions that hear divorce, custody, support, paternity, partition, protective order hearings, and adoptions with the help of hearing officers. A misdemeanor court sits at both courthouses; in Covington, its courtroom is on the first floor of the Justice Center. The court also lists an Adult Drug Court, Family Preservation Court, Re-Entry Court, Sobriety (DWI) Court, and Veterans Court, and it sends people to the clerk for specific case information.
On the east side, the City Court of East St. Tammany handles city court matters. It was called the City Court of Slidell until 2020 legislation renamed it, and its website describes its territory as all of Wards 8 and 9, "essentially all of East St. Tammany Parish." The Louisiana Supreme Court's 2025 Guide to Louisiana Courts lists a clerk and court administrator for this court, separate from the district court clerk.
Appeals from St. Tammany go to the Court of Appeal, First Circuit, which sits in Baton Rouge.
Visiting the St. Tammany Parish courthouse
The Justice Center at 701 North Columbia Street is laid out by elevator. According to the clerk's site, the Civil and Criminal departments are on the basement level by Elevator C, Archives and Recording are on the basement level by Elevator B, and Land Records and Personal Documents are on the ground level. The Archives Department closes for lunch from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. each day, so plan research around that hour.
The Slidell Annex is on the fifth floor of the Towers Building, the parish administrative complex at 520 Old Spanish Trail. It also closes from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., and the clerk asks visitors to call ahead because services there are limited. New civil suits must be filed by 4:00 p.m., protective orders cannot be processed in Slidell, some documents older than 1975 are not immediately on hand, and certified land record copies take longer because staff verify them with Covington. Expungement copy requests made in Slidell take about seven days.
Neither the annex nor the Elections Office at 601 North Jefferson Avenue can accept mail or packages. Letters go to the Covington post office box, and FedEx or UPS deliveries go to the Justice Center street address.
Other St. Tammany Parish offices
Outside Orleans, each sheriff is the parish's chief law enforcement officer and its collector of state and parish property taxes. The Louisiana Sheriffs' Association lists Bret Ibert as St. Tammany's sheriff, with the office online at stpso.com. For jail lookups and how sheriffs' offices work, see the guides to inmate search and Louisiana sheriff's offices.
Louis Fitzmorris, CLA, is the assessor, with offices in the Justice Center building and at 520 Old Spanish Trail in Slidell, according to the assessor's website. The assessors guide covers assessed value and the homestead exemption. The parish is run by St. Tammany Parish Government under Parish President Mike Cooper (stpgov.org); the parish government guide explains how governing bodies differ around the state.