Guide · Dominican Republic
How to look up a case file by NUC, step by step
What the NUC is, where the Judiciary's public lookup lives, what each proceeding returns and what it doesn't. Updated in September 2026.
What the NUC is and what it is for
The NUC — the single case number — is the identifier the Poder Judicial (the Dominican judiciary) uses to number a case file. The sequence observed is national within the current year and not a per-court counter: that is why the number does not say which judicial district hears the case, and you have to look it up to find out.
The case and proceeding search takes it as a search criterion and returns, for that number, the proceedings the case file has accumulated. It is public: it charges nothing, asks for no account and requires no particular browser.
For a lawyer, the lookup answers two different questions: what happened in a case file already on the desk, and whether a case file exists against a person or a company nobody knew about. Both use the same form; what changes is the criterion you go in with.
How to read a NUC
The Dominican NUC is short and says less than its neighbors in the region: it encodes no district, no court and no subject matter, so the number alone is not enough to know where the case file is. It has three parts, and the third one is the one that says whether something moved.
AAAA-NNNNNNN-TTT
- AAAA — the year
- The four digits of the year the case was opened. Always in full: 2026, not 26.
- NNNNNNN — the national sequential
- Seven digits, zero-padded, for the order in which the case came in that year across the whole country. It is a national counter and not one per court: that is why the number does not say which court is hearing the case, and you have to look it up to find out.
- TTT — the proceeding
- Three digits numbering the proceedings inside the same case, in chronological order. The case is named without this suffix; with it you name one specific proceeding, and the jump from one number to the next is exactly what is worth noticing in time.
A mistyped number almost never fails with a clear error: the portal answers an empty list, which reads exactly like «it does not exist». That is why it pays to check the year and the sequential before concluding that a case file does not exist.
The lookup, step by step
These are the steps of the public case and proceeding search, with what is worth looking at in each one.
Open the case and proceeding search
You get there from the Judiciary's site, in its judicial tracking section. Any desktop or phone browser works, and there is no account to create and no session to start.
Type the search criterion
The field takes the full NUC and also a name, a request number or a subject. If you have the NUC, that is always the criterion that returns the least noise; the others are for finding the number when you don't have it.
Review the list of proceedings
The result is not a case file but one row per proceeding, each with its number, its subject, the court and the chamber, the filing date, the state and the date of the last action. A case with three proceedings returns three rows, and the three-digit suffix orders them.
Open the parties of the proceeding
Every proceeding shows its parties with the capacity of each one: claimant, accused, victim, public prosecutor. It is the screen where you actually confirm the case file is the one you were looking for and not a namesake.
Cross-check the hearings roll
The hearings roll is the Judiciary's other public lookup: it publishes scheduled hearings by judicial district, subject matter, court and chamber, with their parties, their format and their state. It is where the date of a case file's next hearing is confirmed.
What the lookup returns
A case file looked up by its NUC returns, for each proceeding, this:
The identification: the case NUC and the proceeding number, with its three-digit suffix.
The subject of the proceeding, written as the court recorded it.
The court and the chamber hearing the proceeding, with the category of the instance.
The filing date and the state the proceeding is in.
The date and time of the last action recorded, which is the mark that moves when something happens.
The parties, with the capacity of each one, and the next hearing when one is scheduled.
What the official lookup does not do
The portal is complete for what exists, and it is worth knowing where it ends.
It does not warn you. There is no email, no notification and no subscription to a case file: whoever wants to hear about a new proceeding has to come back and look.
It does not keep your list. Every lookup starts from scratch, so carrying twenty case files means typing twenty numbers each time.
It does not show what is under seal. Case files with legal confidentiality do not appear in the public lookup.
It does not replace the court's certification. What the portal publishes is the record the court leaves as it goes: the reference everyday work runs on. A certified copy is still requested at the court clerk's office.
It does not compute deadlines. It shows the date of each proceeding; counting the term from it — clear days, and with the increase for distance — is still the lawyer's work.
The first two limits are the ones that get expensive with volume: the portal neither warns nor remembers, so hearing in time depends on somebody logging in every day. That is exactly the part that can be automated.
See how automatic monitoring worksFrequently asked questions about the case lookup
Does the case lookup cost anything?
No. The Judiciary's case and proceeding search is public and free: it answers with no account, no payment and no robot check.
Do I need to create an account?
Not to look a case up: the portal answers any visitor. The Judiciary's digital access portal is a different matter and does require identification; it is where electronic service reaches the lawyer's inbox.
Why doesn't a case file that exists show up?
There are three usual reasons: the NUC is wrong in the year or in the sequential, the case file is under legal confidentiality and is not published, or the filing has not been recorded in the system yet. The lookup answers an empty list in all three cases, so it is worth repeating the search by the party's name before concluding that it does not exist.
How often is the information updated?
Every proceeding carries the date and time of its last action, and that mark is what moves when the court records something. In practice, a proceeding appears when the court records it, not when it is issued.
Looking a case up is easy. Remembering every day is not.
Custodio Legal checks the portal for each of your case files every day and tells you when a new proceeding appears, with the source next to it. Create your free account, no card.