Your understanding of Connecticut procedure is correct. I was doing a title search in Stonington three weeks ago, and ran into a document simply labeled Cert on the computer. It did not show up in the written index because no volume and page had been assigned to it. I had never seen this before. Upon inquiry the town clerk explained that it was a new procedure in response to Connecticut's new civil union law that became effective in October, 2006.  The document was a Certificate of Civil Union. The town clerk was willing to make a copy of it, but first redacted sensitive information such as social security numbers.

Out of the 140+ cities and towns in Connecticut only Norwich and Stamford have chosen to implement fee based on line systems for their land records so far. The expense will probably be too prohibitive for the smaller cities and town because of their inadequate tax bases. Although field cards from many town tax assessor's offices are readily available on line at no charge.