Acknowledgment of Service

There are two ways to initiate a divorce.

The first is by personally serving OPP with the initial pleadings (See  Family Law – Personal Service & follow up tasks – K|H Law Wiki (theintervenors.com)

The second is by mailing all the initial pleadings to OPP with an acknowledgment of service document. In that scenario, the OPP would need to sign the acknowledgment of service and return it to our office in order for proper service to be accomplished. The timeline for their response would begin on the date they signed the acknowledgment of service.

In determining the best way to serve OPP, the client should be consulted and a message similar to this should be sent.

Serving Initial Documents – Once all the initial documents are drafted and you have signed the Petition, we then need to serve the opposing party. There are two ways this can happen.

• Acknowledgment of Service. This means we would mail all the initial pleading documents to the opposing party and he/she would sign a document acknowledging that they received the documents (not that they agree with what is in the documents) and then mail that document back to us. This generally takes about 1 – 3 weeks depending on how quickly the person signs and returns the document. If the other party is aware of the divorce and you’ve been working well together, this is a nice, lower conflict way to do service. If the person does not sign and return the document, then we would likely move on to serve via Personal Service.
• Personal Service. We would hire a process server to directly serve the opposing party with the initial pleading documents. Personal service is quicker than admission of service because it does not rely on the other person to sign something and send it back. Personal service does cost about $50 – $100 depending on how many attempts have to be made. Personal Service usually takes 3-5 days.

Most Common: The more common way is personal service, however, if the parties are amicable, living together, our client is trying to be less confrontational, or OPP knows the divorce is happening, then acknowledgment of service should be considered.

Switching from Ack of Service to Personal Service: It is also an option to start with acknowledgment of service and if OPP doesn’t sign/send it back, then move to personal service.

Emailing Ack of Service: The acknowledgement of service can also be emailed to OPP, but only after sending it out via mail initially. The sometimes occurs in cases where we’ve sent it all by mail and OPP then indicates they’ll sign the ack of service, but maybe they aren’t getting around to physically signing it and sending it back, or they can’t find the initial document.

Templates: The template for the acknowledgment of service can be found in mycase, as can the letter template that we would send with the initial pleadings and acknowledgment of service.

Sending Ack of Serv to OPA: If OPP already has an attorney, we can send them the initial docs and ack of service, but OPA CANNOT sign the ack of service on behalf of their clients. They have to get their client to sign the ack of service and then OPA can send it back to us.