Serve Supreme Court documents

Depending on the document, you can serve documents in a Supreme Court family case in two ways:

  • Personal service
  • Ordinary service

Personal service means that someone must physically hand the document to the person who needs to receive it. You can't do this yourself — you must have another adult serve it for you. This can be a friend or relative, or you can hire a professional process server.

Ordinary service means that the document can be dropped off, mailed, faxed, or emailed to the other person's address for service.

The Supreme Court Family Rules set out whether you must serve a document by personal service or ordinary service.

Personal service or ordinary service?

The table below shows which type of service you need for documents that are common in a family case.

Types of service required for some Supreme Court documents
Document to serve Type of service required
Application Response (Form F32) Ordinary service
Counterclaim (Form F5) Ordinary service unless a new person is named as a respondent
Child Support Affidavit (Form F37) Ordinary service
Financial Statement (Form F8) Ordinary service (although you might want to serve it along with your Notice of Family Claim)
Notice of Address for Service (Form F10) Ordinary service
Notice of Application (Form F31) Ordinary service (but by personal service if your application is to change, suspend, or terminate a final order)
Notice of Family Claim (Form F3) Personal service
Notice of Judicial Case Conference (Form F19) Ordinary service
Notice of Withdrawal (Form F7) Personal service
Petition (Form F73) Personal service
Response to Family Claim (Form F4) Ordinary service
See Rule 6-3(1) of the Supreme Court Family Rules for a complete list of documents that must be served by personal service. If your document isn't on that list, it can be served by ordinary service.

Once you figure out how to serve the document, select the correct guide below.

Serve documents by ordinary service


Ordinary service

 

Serve documents by personal service


Personal service