Madison County Courthouse

There are some good Judges here. Hopefully you don't get Sinnard if you are a male with a clean record.

Gorgeous building in the center of Winterset. It’s a fun little town with shopping all around the square surrounding this building. The visitor center has Bridges of Madison County on DVD if you want it.

Zero compassion, empathy, or understanding for an honest mistake.nnUnbeknown to me as I’ve never been married before I didn’t realize that a certified marriage license application would automatically change my now wife’s last name. For legal purposes, as my wife is not a U.S. citizen, I was under the assumption that we had to file a name change petition. After filling out the paperwork and talking multiple times on the phone with staff who viewed our application and did not once ask why my wife needed to change her last name to my last name when we were already legally married… the petition was filed. Two days later we found out the petition was completely unnecessary, so my wife and I immediately went to the courthouse to withdraw the petition. We spoke to a very rude lady who didn’t even bother to get out of her chair that was on the complete opposite side of the room. We explained to her the misunderstanding and asked if we could redact our petition and be refunded due to this mistake and innocent ignorance of the law. She advised us to hand write a short statement to the judge and ask for a dismissal and refund. We did so and shortly thereafter received the dismissal notice from Judge Stacy Ritchie as well as a denial of a refund.nnOur refund was supposedly denied due to processing that had already taken place. Considering we had only filed the petition a few days prior and were told it would take up to 30 days to be processed, I am confident that the amount of “processing” was pretty minimal. Our petition was dismissed before reaching any level of processing or final decision, so I cannot understand the reasoning behind a refund denial. The website iowacourts.state.ia.us states that rejected filings will be refunded in the payment policy section. It seems unfair that a rejected file can be issued a refund but not a dismissed file especially when it was a simple misunderstanding.nnI have paid taxes in Iowa for 6 years and this doesn’t seem right, ethical, or fair. $195.00 is a lot of money to lose due to an honest mistake.

Had some out of state title issues. In Nebraska where I moved from it would have been stressful and would have dealt with someone with an attitude. Jana and Stephanie were awesome!!! They were friendly and made all the transfers easy! Thank you for all your help!!

This Courthouse has been very well maintained and is a great exhibit of the pride that both the city and the residents take in their community. The staff have always been very friendly and helpful with all of my inquires.