What Does Personal Service Mean | Santa Clarita Divorce
Hi there! This is Tim Blankenship owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist. We’re a licensed and bonded legal document preparation service and we do specialize on only divorce. We can help you anywhere in California.
Today were going to talk to you about what is personal service.
I have the court’s website here; you can read along if you like. I’m just going to go over a bit and explain exactly what personal service is.
Now, this is in regard to divorce. It could be different in other civil cases, so just keep in mind; this is only in regards to divorce. Now we’ve previously talked about who can be a process server/who can act as a process server.
And in this article, we’ll be talking about what it means to personally serve and when you might need to use personal service.
In the divorce case, there are certain things that need to be served by person and some things that can be served by mail. But in personal service, it’s pretty self-explanatory—it’s someone personally serving it.
Just make sure you’re not a party to the divorce, so you have to have some other third- party serving the paperwork, and to do it personally means to personally have them the paperwork.
Now some things to know about, if you’re going through divorce and you’re going to have a friend, a neighbor or someone like that to serve your papers instead of using, say, a processor, they’re going to have to fill out the proof of service. So just make sure if it’s a friend or relative or something, they’re going to know who this person is, what they look like and so forth. So they’re going to know who that person is, who they’re handing the paperwork to. Just make sure that when they’re done, that they mark time, the date and location and their name and they sign a proof of service indicating that your spouse was served.
That way, you can file that form with the court and that’s what actually kicks off the divorce process and start the six (6) month waiting period.
Now, it happens on occasion when one of the spouses won’t accept the paperwork.
What happened if you have your friend or relative hand your spouse’s paperwork and they refuse to receive it or they slam the door on their face or they threw it on the ground or they tear it up—it doesn’t matter. It says here that if the party being served does not want to take the paperwork, they can be left on the ground in front of him/her. If she/he takes the papers and tears them up or throws them on the ground, it is still considered to be a valid proof of service. The person being served does not have to sign anything and that’s probably the most important thing. It’s not what they have to sign and acknowledge receiving it, it’s just someone has to stand there and hand them and if they don’t receive them, just drop them on the ground and your still going to fill up the same proof of service saying that you served so and so on such date at this time and at this place.
If you have any more questions about proof of service or if you’re looking for a company to professionally prepare your divorce papers, please give us a call.
