The act of process serving is an extremely important one. If you need someone to attend court or provide some key documents, then you need to make sure you formally request them to do so. And for a solicitor who is working on a million different things at once – which they usually are – you need someone reliable to help you make sure that your request reaches its intended target.
Whether you’re based in the North West, like us, or you’re from somewhere further afield, EJM Investigations can help. We’re specialists in the Lancashire and Greater Manchester areas but are happy to work wherever we’re needed if the job requires us. So, if you’re looking for help with process serving in Wigan or anywhere else in the region, let us know.
Process Serving Explained
Very briefly, process serving is the act of serving someone with legal documents where simply posting them to the recipient isn’t viewed as acceptable by the courts. Some documents – including divorce petitions, statutory demands, injunctions and more, must have delivery ensured otherwise the courts won’t recognise that the recipient was aware of them.
Process serving is the act of using someone who understands this whole system to deliver documents for you, either in person or via another (legally accepted) means.
What is Proof of Service?
Hiring a process server is no good if you don’t know whether they’ve achieved their goal, and no court is going to just accept a “Yes I did it” either. So, when legal documents are served, proof of service is also required.
Proof of service can be given in multiple formats although some documents may require a specific type of proof. It may be a certificate that includes all the details of service, or a statement, or an affidavit (which is a more formal, sworn statement).
Process servers who know what they’re doing (like us) will know which type of legal document requires which type of proof, and also how to record it in a way that a court will accept. They also know about the level of detail needed depending on the situation.
For example, if we’re trying to serve someone who is clearly acting evasively to avoid it, and we’ve had to serve the documents to them indirectly, then we’ll need to provide a lot more detail of what happened, the attempts we made and the end result to show that every best effort was made to serve them initially, and to also record that the recipient is clearly trying to avoid being served.
If you don’t get proof of service, then you can’t tell a court that you sent the recipient the documents. They can deny ever receiving them, which cat set things back by months. So, make sure you use a process server that knows what they’re doing.
In Summary
If you’re a solicitor in the North West and you’re looking for some help serving some legal documents, give us a call. We know what to do in order to provide acceptable proof of service. So for all your process server needs in Wigan or the surrounding areas, give us a call on 01772 334700.