How to serve someone when you do not have their address?

Can anyone help me out with serving defendant without knowing current address? I’m already paying $5k for a lawyer and adding more for a private investigator would really suck.

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Help a mama out and respond anonymously on our forum. How to serve someone when you do not have their address?g

Maybe work or family.

Depends on what you are trying to serve. Some things allow for service by publication.

Did you try truepeople search?

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My understanding is the lawyer should be looking it up and trying to find the person. After a good faith search you have to enter a request to the court to advertise in the local newspaper. I believe they have 30days to respond. If not you can actually get granted everything you are asking for. That is in the state of NM so not sure in other states. However your lawyer should be doing his part.

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I had a friend who had her husband served at his gym.

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Ummmm… your lawyer is not doing their job if you are asking the public this question.

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Look for known associates. Friends, family members. Search their name in background check.

I had my husband served at work.

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Your attorney should be able to answer that. If you know any of their family or friends, use social media to see if you can find any information. Go to the courthouse in your area and look in the records for any suits, check property records also.

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Truepeoplesearch.com

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at their job perhaps

You can serve them at their work too. I personally would track their routes and follow them to find address.

If you have a lawyer then they should be the one serving them and figuring all that out. If it helps I know once my lawyer had asked the judge permission to serve documents through email and he gave permission so we did that. Good luck.

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My son ended up paying for a PI to confirm the address. His girlfriend found it online.

If you’re trying to serve for a divorce, they’ll often let you post an ad in the newspaper.

This is what you pay your lawyer for.

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Your lawyer is supooed to find him not you btw

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You can post an ad in the newspaper and courthouse door I believe and if they don’t respond within a certain time frame the courts will accept that.

I would say ur lawyer should be the one serving him. If I was paying a lawyer n I had to find out where he was ex ex I would fire lawyer

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Depending on the state, when a physical address is not known, you can serve through a public notice in a newspaper. Your attorney should be aware of this.

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All you have to do is go to their last known address or their job

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Post the article in 3 periodical, your lawyer should have already told you. 2 of them can be legal, for lawyers, periodicals.

Do I know where they work?
You can serve them at a family member house as well that they go there often. That family member gives to them.
Also u don’t serve directly, get someone else to do it. You can hire a professional server. Attorneys have one they use. Police officer can serve it cost $40 and they do 3 attempts but u will need address.

Your lawyer can run his name an match SSC# to find where he works an serve them at work

If you see them out an about you can carry a copy of the papers with you…when you see them, call a cop give cop the papers and he will be served on the spot…done

Place of employment, places they frequent ( gf/bf house, parents house, friends house, school etc )

Serve them at work if you know where they work

Order of Publication in the newspaper.

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If you can’t find them you can put a notice in the newspapers to notify them

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Google their name in quotations like “handy manny” then the city & state they (might) live in, click on the mylife website that pops up & it gives you all their addresses past & present :slightly_smiling_face:

Isn’t that your lawyers job?

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Your lawyer should be getting him served. However, nowadays, you can online and pay $25 or so and get the address and phone number of anyone.

Not sure where you are located but I had to run ad in the newspaper

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There are websites where you can find their addresses.

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This might depend on area…You only have to serve them at the last known address. If they aren’t there i was told I had to put an ad in the paper for x weeks and that was that.

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My lawyer was able to serve my sperm doner at his moms house because she gave my lawyer permission as he was there like all the time but he didn’t live there :woman_shrugging:t3:

It depends on what documents you’re serving, but (where I’m at) the courts require so many attempts before they will just bypass it. I had papers to serve to my ex husband, and I looked on case search and sent notice to all of the addresses listed under his name, his mothers house, sisters house and brothers house as well as his last known employer. You should also be able to pay a small fee for the local Sheriffs to try to serve them.

If none of that works, you should be able to present proof to the courts that you made a good faith attempt and proof that you can’t afford a private investigator or public publication and they should be able to proceed without the other party being served.

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First of all, get yourself a new lawyer. She/he should be the one serving the other person. Not you. She/he is working for you.

And to answer your question, if you don’t know the current address you can use the last known address or make post in the local newspaper where he/she lived last.

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Send it to last known address. Thats what I did

Your lawyer should be handling all that n the correct forms…
The courts have a form that will grant permission to mail to last known address. In WA state, it has 90 days for divorce if no reply n family court is same but I don’t recall how long for reply… If no reply, courts can grant

Find them on facebook

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You have to run an ad in the paper. I believe it has to run 3 weeks in the paper. Your lawyer should know all this. If not then maybe you need a different lawyer.

Sheriff department does it for free and if it’s divorce; I don’t think you have to go to that extent necessary. If they can’t locate after 2 attempts, run an add in local paper for 30 days (I think it is) and you should be good. That is my state’s requirement.

Employment, parents, sibling, anyone who once they hand that over will get the notice.

Public notice like a newspaper.

Send to mothers address or another family member

Just send the summons to the last known address it doesn’t matter if it’s current and then when they send correspondence back you take that and publish it in the newspaper

Process server this is for Tennessee not sure what it’s called elsewhere

Find their place of work

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Put an ad in the paper

If you know where they work you can serve them there. If you don’t know where they work go to places they normally hang out at, especially if you’re in a small town.

Do you know where they work? Who they hang out with? Do you know where they live? Just not the address because that’s easy

I live in wi, and when I had to serve my ex something to do with custody changes, he didn’t have a current address so they made me send it to the last known address. It bounced back to me but they said that was all I could do