All legal documents you have lodged via the court registry, and which have been accepted by that court registry, must be delivered to the other party, or other parties, as soon as possible. Delivering these court documents is referred to as service, because you are serving the other party or parties with a copy of those court documents. 

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There are very specific requirements that dictate how service must be effected, and if these requirements are not met, the other party may have liberty to argue they were in fact not served, or that service was defective. The other party may then use this as a tactic to delay court proceedings. 

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Some court documents may be served by ordinary service. Some specific court documents must be served via special service, including the Form 1 Initiating Application that you had lodged at, and which were accepted by, the court registry at the Family Court of Western Australia, for example. Knowing or figuring out which documents require ordinary versus special service, how to serve them, and physically executing service, can be incredibly challenging and confusing. 

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Once your court documents are served on the other party or other parties, you must provide the court proof of service. Proof of service is significantly important, yet very poorly understood, and very poorly complied with. The Acknowledgement of Service is a legal document signed by the recipient of the documents served, evidencing they have received them. The Affidavit of Service is a legal document signed by the person serving the documents on the recipient, evidencing if, and how, those documents were, or were not, served, and why. 

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Often, the most convenient and comfortable way to effect service is to engage a Process Server. This is a service we provide. For service of court documents in and around all Perth suburbs, we charge $165.

 

Service of court documents can be extremely confusing and intimidating, particularly when family violence is involved and the Respondent, the recipient of the court documents being served, is the perpetrator. Likewise, process servers can be difficult to work with, and often do not understand or comply with their legal obligations. Last week, another process server had attended to service and had copied an Affidavit of Service they had previously completed for another client. The process server failed to change the matter number. Difficulties then arose when the matter appeared in court.  

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I possess a legal qualification and I have 20 years' experience in litigation, and I was responsible for effecting service, completing documentation evidencing that service was effected, and lodging these proof of service documents via the court registry. 

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We prepare the Acknowledgement of Service and the Affidavit of Service, and provide them to you for lodging via the court registry. If you have engaged us to assist you with lodging court documents, we will do so as soon as possible, after having attempted service.

 

Engaging us to effect service eliminates distress and discomfort associated with having to do it yourself. 

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If you would like to know more about service of court documents visit our Blog page to read our blog about service of court documents.