Today we’re going to talk about how to serve your spouse when you file for divorce in California but your spouse lives in another state. And it’s very simple.

You have three ways you can do this.

If you guys are not in agreement and your spouse is not going to cooperate. Simply, file your case in the county you live in and hire a process server in the city they live in.

We do this a lot, where parties are not cooperating, where the other party is not going to agree. You can simply hire a process server. Call them up, fax them or scan them and email them the divorce documents and then the documents that needed to be served. Give them an address.

It’s somewhere between $50 and $75 depending on the state or the city and get them served.

They’ll send you the proof of service. Done deal. File it with the court.

Now, before I do that. If you have a case where you guys are going to work through this together and you’re going to be cooperative. You have two other ways you can do this.

Number one, you can mail it or have someone else mail it rather. Not you. Mail it to them at the state the papers to be served along with the notice of acknowledgement of receipt. This is a form the other party can sign, essentially acknowledging receipt of the paperwork. It’s the easy way of doing things.

They sign it, they date it. They send it back to you and you file that form with the proof of service and the effective date of service is the date they signed the paper. Very simple.

The other way you can do it when they’re out of state is by certified mail.

If you do it by certified mail, your date of service is going to be the date it’s delivered. When you do certified mail make sure you do return receipt requested. That way, you’ll get the card back. The green card, the postage card back from the post office after it has been delivered it’ll be stamped having been delivered. That date that it’s either signed by the other party or stamped by the post office. That will be your date of service.

You need to file the original post office return receipt with your proof of service and make sure you mark the appropriate box on your proof of service form.

This is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. We can help you with your divorce in anywhere in California. Please give us a call, I’d be happy to help. 661-281-0266 or you can go to our website at divorce661.com for more information.

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