After a complaint for divorce has been filed, the next step is to serve the other party. In many cases a process server will be hired to serve the summons and complaint for divorce at the address of the other party. However, there are instances where the location of the other party is unknown. After showing the Court you made a good faith effort to serve the other party, you may make an application to serve the other party through the legal section of the local newspaper. In today’s day and age many people never look in the legal section of the newspaper and never click the legal section of the newspapers webpage – This is a generation of social media.
In this case, the last known address of the husband was a vacated apartment, he didn’t have a fixed address and was not employed. The New York court permitted the wife to serve her husband with the divorce summons using the private message function on Facebook. The wife’s attorney was required to send the husband a copy of the divorce summons once a week for three consecutive weeks or until the husband acknowledged receipt.
The New York Court felt that there was higher probability that the husband would see the summons on his Facebook page than in the newspaper. Who knows, maybe New Jersey is next?
Loading...