Serving A Claim Form Order

What’s it for?

Serving a claim is very important, as you cannot do anything else to progress your case until the defendant has been served with the court documents. There are special rules about how you can serve your claim on the defendant, depending on whether they are a person or a company or similar.

When you start a claim in the Magistrates Court, you are normally responsible for organising someone to serve the claim on the defendant. This could be done yourself, or you can hire a professional process serving company such as Diem Legal to serve the documents on your behalf. The final option is hiring the court sheriff or bailiff to serve the documents – but hours of service may be restrictive.

How to Serve a Claim Form Order

To properly serve documents on a person, you must hand the documents:

• directly to the person
• to their parent, guardian or litigation guardian if the person is a child or has a legal disability
• to someone at the person’s usual or last known place of residence/business who is reasonably believed to be an adult
• to someone who is authorised in writing to receive documents for the person, or to an agent or lawyer who is acting for the person.

If a person (or their parent/guardian/refuses to take the documents, we can serve them by telling them about the nature of the claim and the documents, and leaving the documents somewhere in their presence (for example, on a table or on the ground in front of them).

Time Limits on Serving The Claim

As stated in rule 7.5(1), the claimant or their representatives must effect service within four calendar months of the date of issue of the proceedings.

Please note: The above is not meant to constitute legal advice. The law changes regularly and as such we recommend speaking to a legal professional for clarification.