Nashville private detectives for the questions you can’t ask out loud.

Yes. Private investigation is a licensed profession in Tennessee, regulated by the Department of Commerce & Insurance under the Private Investigators Licensing and Regulatory Act (Tenn. Code Ann. Title 62, Chapter 26). What matters is how the work is done: lawful surveillance from public places, public and proprietary records, interviews and open-source research are all legal. Hacking accounts, recording other people’s private conversations or hiding a GPS tracker on a car you don’t own are not, and we do not do them.

Our goal is that they never do. Surveillance is run from vehicles and positions chosen to blend in, we do not contact the subject unless that is part of an agreed plan, and nothing is mailed to your home or sent to a shared email unless you tell us it is safe. If the risk of being noticed gets too high on a given day, we pull back and try again rather than burn the case.

It depends on the work: a records-based locate or background check is a defined, smaller job; surveillance is priced by the hours in the field and how many detectives the situation needs. We do not start the clock on a phone call. You get the plan and the cost in writing first, and nothing happens until you approve it. See how hiring works for what drives cost and how to keep it down.

That is the standard we work to. Surveillance video is time- and date-stamped, notes are kept contemporaneously, reports are written plainly enough for a judge to follow, and the detective who did the work can testify about it. Whether a judge admits or weighs a particular piece of evidence is up to the court, which is why we recommend involving your attorney early on anything headed to litigation.

No. You can call or text and describe the situation in general terms first. We will tell you honestly whether a detective is likely to help, what it would involve, and what we would need from you. If you decide to move forward, we will need your identity and a signed agreement, as any licensed agency must.

All of Nashville and Davidson County, plus Brentwood and Franklin, Murfreesboro and Smyrna, Hendersonville and Gallatin, Mt. Juliet and Lebanon, and the rest of Middle Tennessee. Subjects do not stay put, so surveillance follows them where the law allows. See the full Nashville service area.

Then you have learned something real. An honest “nothing happened during the hours we watched” can be as valuable as a photograph, and we report it the same way. We will also tell you when continuing is unlikely to change the picture, so you are not paying for hope.

If you are already in a divorce, custody case or lawsuit, yes, or at least at the same time. Evidence is most useful when it answers the questions your attorney actually needs answered. We regularly work at an attorney’s direction, and we are glad to talk with yours before we start.