Danish Retskreds

Back to Portal Denmark

A retskreds is a geographical area for a court or judgment seat, the juridical district. The main authority in the retskreds was the judge who had a wide variety of responsibilities. Some of these responsibilities included judging in all civil and criminal cases, being the over-all authority at auctions, probates, and divorce cases, and being a witness to wills and testaments. In 1972, the retskreds was reduced dramatically in number, as well as the size of the boundaries to the kommune boundaries after the communal reform of 1970. Denmark was until 1 Jan 2007 divided into 82 city retskreds. From 1 Jan 2007 was the countryside was divided into 24 retskredse. It is important to check to see what retskreds records are available for the area of research, especially when dealing with court cases and probate records.