 <p>You don't need the ' in <code>NSPredicate</code>. They are being inserted automatically.</p> <p>Just try</p> <pre><code>[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"(name like %@)",name]; </code></pre> <hr> <p>The reason this crashed was because the predicate value was interrupted. If you create a string with format, like in your example, your going to end up with <strong>(name like 'family's')</strong>, which obviously can't work. </p> <p>If you use <code>predicateWithFormat:</code> on the other hand, you can let it handle this itself. It will escape your special characters.</p>