There are many hurdles you can come over when you try to get a divorce. But what if you can’t get divorced at all since you don’t know where your spouse is?
Actually, it is not true, you can file for divorce, even without your spouse’s presence. It often happens that you get separated without bothering to go through an official procedure, and after a while, you realize that you need to complete a legal divorce. It is no more a problem if you have no idea about the whereabouts of your ex-partner. There is a certain procedure to get a divorce with only one party present.
File for a Divorce
Before you move on to special measures to divorce a spouse, you can’t find, a standard divorce process is waiting for you. So, you need to download or retrieve a divorce package from your attorney, fill all the forms out and file for divorce in a common way. Petition for Dissolution is among the first documents you have to hand. This way your case will be registered and officially taken to the court. Mind that this is not the beginning of the process yet since the other partner should know about the divorce as well.
Complete the Service
To let your ex-partner know about the upcoming divorce you have to serve divorce documents to him/her. But this is your most challenging concern for that moment since you don’t know where to find your previous spouse. Firstly, let’s look through the ways to serve the documents as if you have found your ex.
- Personal service – you may deliver the documents to your spouse personally, or, if you have no wish to face him/her, you can hire a person to provide your ex with documents and retrieve the answer immediately after if possible.
- Mail service – you can also send a package of divorce papers via mail and wait for the answer, yet, it may take much time.
- Alternative services – if you cannot serve the documents with the help of two previous services and service by publication, described below, you may complete the service, using alternative means. Hold in mind, that you cannot use any of the alternative services until it is permitted to you by the court. So, consult your attorney or a good divorce website to get detailed instructions for alternative services.
Anyway, you cannot dwell on the way of serving the divorce papers, until you find your ex, so, put all effort into it.
Make Reasonable Efforts
To satisfy the court and legal divorce process, you have to use all opportunities to find your partner on your own. You can try to track him/her down personally by the last known address, asking neighbours and checking official phone and mail lists. With modern tools, you can get to know your ex-spouse’s whereabouts much easier by exploring his\her online activity in social media. There are also special applications with different levels of personal data access, which may help you to find your previous partner by IMEI code, car, bank activity or credit card use and other personal details.
No matter what services you use, you should prove by your actions that you have done everything possible to find your ex to proceed with alternative divorce services.
Service by Publication
If you don’t succeed in discovering your spouse in common ways, you may try multiple alternative means of service. Mind, that some of them need to be approved by the court. The most popular alternative service is a service by publication. You don’t have to ask the court for permission to use it, yet it should follow all the rest possible means but not go prior.
To use service by publication you need to post information about your filing for divorce in the nearest local to the last known place of living of your ex. Then you need to keep it in the paper for 20 days to give the other party time to respond. If you haven’t received any feedback after all of the efforts, you may move on to the divorce by default.
Divorce by Default
You can finish up with the divorce procedure without ever seeing or hearing from your ex-spouse. All your assets, debts, possession and other mutual issues will be divided without him/her present at the hearing. More to this, if you present yourself from the better side, you have high chances to have your requests pleased.
To get divorced by default you have to deal with appropriate procedures, yet, you will get the desired outcomes. To start with, you need to get, fill out and file the Divorce Application Form and Affidavit for Default. Deliver the documents to the last known address of your ex-partner in any way you wish and wait for 10 days. Obviously, getting no feedback you can ask for a default hearing and prepare all the necessary documents before the hearing itself. Go through the hearing without any fuss and get your Final Decree for divorce approved and signed. Now, you can breathe freely and move on to your happiness.
By the way, if you need some qualitative assistance or fresh ideas on any stage of the divorce procedure, before or after it, you are welcome to ask the professional customer support team at OnlineDivorcer for help.
