Santa Clarita Divorce : How To Serve Divorce Papers

There are several ways to serve your Santa Clarita divorce papers.  When people here the word “served” they automatically think of “personal service”.  And while personal service of your Santa Clarita divorce papers is what people commonly think of, there are other ways to have your spouse served divorce papers. Let’s discuss a few ways to serve divorce papers.

Personal Service Of Santa Clarita Divorce Papers

First, you have what we were just talking about, personal service. This means that you have someone, other than yourself, over the age of 18, and not a party to the case, literally hand the divorce papers being served to the person being served.

Many people think that when they personally serve someone divorce papers that the person receiving them needs to sign something. This is not correct. When you personally serve someone divorce papers, you literally just hand them to them and walk away.  Even if they look at them and drop them or throw them, they have been served.

But how does the court know they have been served? Because the person who served the divorce papers will fill out a proof of personal service of summons and file it with the court.

Service By Notice and Acknowledgment Of Receipt of Divorce Papers

Second, is the way were prefer to have our clients served. It is simply by having the person being served, also known as the Respondent, sign a form FL-117 which is a notice of acknowledgment of receipt. This is a form that gets signed where the Respondent is saying they received a copy by mail.

This is our go-to-way of serving our amicable divorce clients who are using our service. Why? Because people going through amicable divorce cases in Santa Clarita don’t want to have their spouse embarrassed at work by having someone come into their place of residence or business and have someone hand them divorce papers. That’s why!

For that reason, we don’t do that unless the divorce case we are handling is not amicable, or where the other party is not returning the notice of acknowledgment.

Service Of Divorce Papers By Certified Mail

Third, you have certified mail. Yes, you can serve divorce papers by certified mail, but only if the other party is living out of state. And, there are different rules on what you use for the date of service on the judgment when you are using service by certified mail and specific instructions.

How you ultimately serve your spouse the divorce papers will be based upon if your Santa Clarita divorce is amicable or not. We always try the easy way first and people are glad to hear that their spouse will not be getting personally served.