When starting any legal proceeding, service of process is a big deal.
In order to get a lawsuit, dissolution of marriage, paternity petitioner, adoption petition, or other family law, legal proceeding going, the petitioning party must issue service of process.
What is service of process? I discussed in a prior post the common meaning and some common mistakes that are made when people who are not family law attorneys file their own legal documents. In essence, service of process means that when you file something with the court, the oppossing party must be served with everything.
A common problem with service of process is that people often do not want to be served. Imagine this scenario: a wife wants to file a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage (divorce). She has not retained an attorney but she wants to file the correct documents with the court. She manages to get the correct information to the court in her legal documents. However, the husband does not want to be served and simply refuses to accept any legal documents. This is a problem.
One solution to this common problem is a return of service of process form. Not every state utilizes the return of service of process form. Some states don’t require it or use an entirely different service of legal process form.
In the states that do use the form, the application of it often goes something like this: using the example of the husband and wife, we know that the wife is trying to serve the divorce paperwork on the husband. The husband does not want to receive or even acknowledge the paperwork. In the case of the return service of process form, the wife can send the document to the husband and if he refuses it, she can ask the court later for fees and costs of sending the process to the husband.
In this way, the courts try to ensure that the wife or her lawyer is not out money because the husband simply refuses service. If the form is sent and the husband refuses to acknowledge it, the court, in some states, will order that the husband pay the costs of service of process.
Knowing the proper service of process procedure is very important. Experienced family law attorneys will explain the service of process issues to you. Attempting to file legal documents with a court may be ok, but unrepresented people often fail to understand both how and when to serve process on the other side. Don’t make that mistake.
This post was written by Joseph M. Flanders, an Apple Valley family law attorney.
