How Do I Find My Own Probate Leads in this County?

[Alvin Grier]

I went to the Probate Court in Detroit a few days ago to take a stab at grabbing my own probate leads for Wayne County, Michigan.

Unlike some of the adjacent counties, that have a book of all of the probate case filings, Wayne County doesn't.  Wayne County has a search engine that you have to enter either a case number or a last name to search with.

It seems like the only option to find leads on my own in Wayne County is to reference the newspaper each week and document the names of people that pass away, then search for them over a period of time on the county's computer system.

This option isn't very appealing to me, and feels downright morbid.

Is there any other way to find the names or case numbers of filings that I can use to search the system to obtain my own probate leads?