Serve your Plaintiff's Claim by substituted service

For substituted service your server must deliver the forms at least 25 days before your court date, or 30 days before your court date if the person, business, or government you're serving is in a different county from where you opened your case.

Calculate your deadline

• Look at a calendar.
• Find the court date the court clerk put on Page 1 of your Claim form. Start counting from that day back.
• Start counting from that day back. The day before the court date is day 1. The next day before it is day 2, etc.
• Keep counting back until you get to 25 (or 30) days.

• Check what day this is:  

  • If it’s Monday through Friday and not a holiday you must have the forms delivered by the end of that day. 

  • If it’s a Saturday or Sunday or court holiday, count back to a day that court will be open. You must have the forms delivered by the end of that day. 

Your server:

1. Hands a copy of the papers to either:

• Someone 18 or older who is at the home and lives with the person to be served
• Someone 18 or older who seems in charge where the person works
• Someone 18 or older who seems in charge where the person usually gets their mail (but not a United States Postal Service (USPS) post office box).

2. Tells the person:

"Please give these court forms to [name of person they're trying to serve]."

3. Asks the person their name or writes down what they look like if they won’t give their name.

4. Writes down:

• The address where they gave the person the forms 
• The date and time they gave the person the forms

The server needs to keep track of this information to fill it in on the Proof of Service form in the next step. The forms must be served before the deadline you calculated in the last step.

Next, your server must also mail a copy of the papers to the person being served at the address where they left the forms. This is a back-up copy your server needs to send as a 2nd way to make sure the other side knows they're being sued.

Your server writes down:

• The date they mailed the person the forms
• The city and state where they mailed the person the forms 
• What type place they mailed the forms from (a Post Office Box or office mail room, for examples), or if they gave them to someone else to mail for them.

Use the Proof of Service (form SC-104).

You can fill in the top part of the form with the case and court information but the server has to fill out how, when, and where they served the papers from Step 3, above.

• They must check off the forms that were served (Section 3)
• They must fill in the parts about substituted service (Section 4b)
• The server must then fill out information about themselves (Section 5) and
• Date, print their name, and sign the form (Section 6)

1. Make one copy of your filled out Proof of Service form.
2. File the original and copy at least 5 days before your court date.
3. The court will keep the original.
4. The court will stamp and return the copy to you.
5. Keep the copy for your records.