How to Serve Someone a Claim for Small Claims Court

Are you in the process of taking someone to small claims court for a debt they owe you? Before you begin, you should get some legal advice on court procedure or get a procedural booklet from the courthouse that outlines this for you. There are established procedures of serving the parties your claim that you need to follow.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Copy of court procedures booklet
• Legal advice

How to serve someone a claim for small claims court

1. You can hire a process server whose sole job is to deliver legal documents to people.
2. The process server will swear an affidavit outlining exactly what time to the minute that the papers were delivered. If they weren’t delivered, the server will keep notes of the dates and times they tried and of the responses of the people they spoke to at the places for delivery. The sworn affidavit of the server shows the court when the party was served or their reaction and refusal of the documents.
3. You can deliver the papers in person yourself and then swear an affidavit that states when and where the documents were delivered.
4. You can have someone else – a friend or family member – deliver the documents and then have them swear an affidavit outlining when and where they delivered them and the reaction of the receiver.
5. You can send the documents by registered mail and the receipt would be the proof that the documents were received.

Tips & Warnings

• The key to delivering the documents to the other party is to get whoever delivered them to swear an affidavit, which is proof that they were either, served, refused or not delivered.
• You can send the documents by regular mail but there is no way of verifying if the person received them or not. The judge might be reluctant to make a judgment against a party if there is no proof that the party was served and no way of knowing if the party was even aware of the suit against them.