Is he cheating? Find out for sure.

Suspicion is its own kind of work. It rereads old messages, times the commute, and turns a late meeting into a case file. Before another week goes into it, it helps to know what can be established and what cannot.

Recordwell starts from a name. You type the full name of the person you are wondering about, and the search gathers what the public record holds under it.

That is a narrow instrument, deliberately. It does not read a phone. It does not open an account that belongs to someone else. It cannot tell you where he was on Friday.

What it does is put a story next to a record and let you see whether the two agree.

Most deception is not hidden in messages. It sits in the gap between what someone says about their life and what has been written down about it.

A marriage he never mentioned is written down. A divorce described as final may not be. An address he has never named can appear in his history.

Those are the contradictions worth looking for, because they are checkable by anyone and they do not depend on your reading of a tone of voice.

Start with the name as he gives it, then try the variants. A middle initial, a shortened first name, a former surname in the family — each can pull a different thread.

Read what comes back slowly. The first instinct is to hunt for confirmation. The more useful habit is to look for the parts that simply do not fit.

Three outcomes are possible, and all three tell you something.

The record can agree with what you were told. That is the common result, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than explained away.

The record can contradict it. A marital status, a second address, a matter filed under his name — something concrete that he will either be able to explain or will not.

The record can be quiet. Thin results prove nothing on their own; plenty of ordinary people leave little behind, especially if they rent or have moved often.

The mistake to avoid is treating silence as an answer. An empty result is an absence of information, not the presence of guilt.

It is worth being honest with yourself about what you hope to find, because that hope shapes how you read every line.

There is also a legal line here, and it is not blurry.

Looking up publicly available information about an adult is lawful. Anyone can do it, and it is done every day by employers, landlords and people arranging a first date.

Getting into his phone, his mail or his accounts is a different act. In most places it is a crime, and it can be one between spouses.

Tracking software installed on someone else's device carries the same problem. The apps that advertise it rarely mention what they are asking you to do.

Beyond the law, there is a practical reason to stay on the public side of that line: anything obtained the other way is usually worthless if the situation ever reaches a lawyer.

A record you can point to, by contrast, is something a professional can work with.

If you find a contradiction, resist the urge to present it immediately. Write down what you found, where it appeared, and what it actually says.

Then check whether there is an innocent reading. Names repeat. Two people can share a full name in the same state, and record systems will show you both.

Confirm the match on a second detail — an age, a middle name, a city you already know about — before you treat a finding as his.

Getting this wrong is not a small error. An accusation built on a namesake is hard to take back.

Once you are confident, you face a decision that has nothing to do with searching.

Some people want certainty before a conversation. Others find that the search has only made the conversation harder to postpone.

Neither is wrong. What tends not to work is the indefinite middle, where checking replaces talking and the doubt keeps its grip.

If the relationship involves shared money, a lease, a mortgage or children, the practical questions arrive quickly.

A second household leaves traces in property and court filings. If that is what you are looking at, a family lawyer will want documents rather than impressions.

Bring what you have in writing. A one-page summary of dates, names and where each item appeared is worth more than an hour of recollection.

It is also worth checking what the record says about you. People are often surprised by their own file, and a joint matter can look different from the other side.

Our guide to a self background check covers how to read your own record before anyone else does.

If the worry began with someone he has been talking to online, a check on that name may be more useful than another pass over his.

The pages on a dating safety check and a catfish check deal with identities that may not be what they claim.

For filings specifically, the court record search guide explains which matters end up in a public index and which never do.

Finally, something that has nothing to do with records. Living inside a suspicion is corrosive, and a search cannot settle a question that is really about trust.

Use the record for the part it can answer, give the rest to a conversation or to someone you trust, and set a point at which you stop looking.