As a Process Server you will be serving restraining orders in your civil process server packs to people going through a divorce and for others as well.
The big question is how should you handle this given the dangers and, more accurately, the fact that since it usually works out peacefully when you serve the papers, how “on guard” should you be?
99% of the time serving court papers with a restraining order will go smoothly for you. But you should still be on guard and don’t take your safety for granted.
This week’s process server training video explains this in more detail.
In the meantime, this is Larry Kaye reminding you to do the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing.
Committed to your success and safety,
Larry Kaye, P.I.
P.S. – Need a Process Server badge? I highly recommend you get one at FirstDefenderTacticalGear.com (Yes, I do make money when you buy through this link, but it’s doesn’t cost you any more than going directly there.)
It’s not uncommon for a client to hire you to find out if a person has died.
This is not as easy as it seems because the client has tried all the easy stuff before hiring you!
But, this week I do have a list of some of my sources and methods for finding out if a person is dead.
1. SSMDI
The Social Security Master Death Index.
In the U.S. most dead people are listed here since 1935.
There are a bunch of genealogy website that offer this search for free but they won’t include the last 6 years or so. Go figure.
And, Just FYI… I wouldn’t join any genealogy site just to gain access to their database.
2. County Board of Health
If the person died in that county, their death certificate should be listed there.
3. State Bureau of Vital Statistics
There’s a lag of a few weeks or more, but any death in their state will be listed in their index.
4. Interviews
You can just ask.
Relatives. Co-Workers. Landlords. They’ll know.
Committed to your success,
Larry Kaye,
Private Investigator & Best Selling Author
P.S. – If you like this information, my previously invitation only Public Records Mini-Course is open to the public so now you can learn about criminal records history, divorce records, OSINT sources and methods and other skip tracing and background check secrets use by professional investigators!
No restricted databases.
No one telling you you don’t qualify fro access because you don’t have a P.I. license with the state!
No lies or pretexts needed!
Just rock solid sources and methods to get the information you need.
Private Investigators use a variety of sources and methods to find people and do background checks including the liberal use of public records.
I got a question from a viewer named Darrel who’s getting into process serving. He’s about to serve his first pack, and he really wants to make sure he gets it right. He asked if I had a video that teaches step by step instructions for serving process. Something that he could listen to, over and over again, to really get it into brain so he does it well. Here’s that video!
The most basic form of serving process:
Step one, you pick up the service pack that you need to serve.
Step two, you hold back the Return of Service page for yourself.
Step three, you serve the papers.
Step four, you take the return of service page and you file it with the clerk of courts.
In its simplest form, that’s all there is to process serving!
To expand just a little bit…
I like to do one extra step and let the client, usually a law firm, know that I have filed the return of service.
At that point, bill your client and collect your check.
That’s it! That’s the whole process.
Details for Each Step
Step 1: Pick up the papers.
This is going to be either at the law firm or at the courthouse. It depends on how the law office wants to handle it. They’ll tell you.
This is not difficult. This is not scary.
Once you work with a law firm a couple of times, you’ll get it.
Usually, if you’ve picked the papers up from the law office before, that means they have them at the law office for you to pick up. You’ll run in, get them from the front desk person or, if it’s a small firm, you’ll get them from the attorney.
Or they might say they’ve got some service packs for you down at the courthouse. Just go to the courthouse and to the clerk of court’s office.
Tell them who you are and that you’re there to pick up some service packs. They’ll look through their pile, they’ll hand you the service packs, and that’s it.
Step 2: Hold back the return of service sheet for yourself.
This is going to be, usually, the top page. Sometimes it’s two pages. If it’s more than one page, usually they’re stapled together.
The rest of the pack (the papers you’re going to serve) is stapled or bull-dogged clipped together, depending on how big it is.
You simply hang onto the top page or two that should pretty clearly say, “Return of Service”.
You can see an example right here.
Proof of Service (AKA: Return of Service) form example.
Step 3: Serve the pack.
Just serve the pack of papers. This is literally just delivery service.
You go out to wherever the person is, you hand it to them, and that’s it.
Nineteen out of twenty times, they’re gentlemanly and a lady-like about it. They understand. Don’t sweat the serving of process.
Can there be snags, weirdness, and oddness? Yes, of course there can. That’s why I have the Investigator’s Ultimate Guide to Process Serving. I cover all these different scenarios like if it’s a bad address, if they’re hiding, if they won’t answer the door, etc.
So, yes. Sometimes, that one in twenty (or maybe less!) you’ll run into a snag like that. And yes, extended paid training will teach you how to handle all that stuff. But really, you just take that service pack and serve it to the person. Just deliver the papers.
Step 4: File the Return of Service (AKA: Affidavit of Service)
Take the return of service page that you held back for yourself and fill it out. It’s fill-in-the-blank.
It’s check-boxes. You check off that you served this person personally at such and such time, date, and location. You sign it and file that with the clerk’s office. Nothing scary there.
You go down to the clerk’s office with that piece of paper, that Return of Service, and slide it across the desk. They punch it in a time clock to the date/time stamp exactly when it was filed, and that’s it.
WARNING:
It is, technically, an affidavit. It’s technically a sworn statement. You cannot lie on it. You should never lie on this. Don’t get me started on the ethics of this… Do your job well. Do your job honestly.
Once you file that return of service, you may want to do step five. I particularly like to do this.
Step 5: Give the client a copy of the filed Return of Service.
So, when you file the Return of Service (sometimes called Affidavit of Service), get a copy of that filed return of service for yourself. You can give this copy, or a photocopy of it, to your client (usually the law firm).
Big Advantages For You
This let’s them know the pack was served and gives them documented evidence just in case they need it.
Maybe the law office wants this. Maybe they don’t. But, I have found that they all like to get it. It’s that nice, little professional courtesy and it sets you apart (over and above!) other process servers!
So, once they hire you, they see:
You’re doing a professional job.
Your service reflects well upon the law firm.
You’re successful in all reasonable circumstances where you could be expected to be successful.
You’re doing all of that and then going this above and beyond where you’re giving them the copy of the return of service that you filed!
If you just have to stretch this out to more than that, there’s step six…
Step 6: Bill your client.
For me, that was always at the end of the month. I just sent them an invoice, due within thirty days.
Step 7: Cash the check!
You may not be getting paid with an actual check. You’ve probably arranged a payment method with them that they like. That’s the important thing. That they like. So, maybe they want to write you a check. Or maybe they like to pay you electronically.
Finally…
The actual process of serving process is not tricky or hard to understand.
If you have any questions or you think this needs to be expanded a little bit, please let me know. I’d be delighted to include that information in a future article.
In the meantime, this is Larry Kaye reminding you to do the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing.
Committed to your success and safety,
Larry Kaye, P.I.
P.S. – Need a Process Server badge? I highly recommend you get one at FirstDefenderTacticalGear.com. Yes, I do make money when you buy through this link, but it’s doesn’t cost you any more than going directly there.)
Do the police hire private investigators? This is a question I recently got and it’s a really good question. The idea is do police departments hire private investigators, in a sneaky way, so that they can get information that they might be illegal for them to get or otherwise be restricted for them to get.
Here’s my personal experience with these things….
I haven’t had any police department hire me to find information on citizens that would other wise be illegal for the police to find.
Of course, individual police officers have hired me. I’ve discussed this in another article, but it’s where they have a personal matter, like a divorce or something else where they don’t want to do anything that would compromise the integrity of the investigation or put them in an awkward position professionally.
A warning from Larry:
Obviously, no man getting a divorce and who wants to prove his wife is cheating should be sitting outside of her house or on her block doing surveillance. That’s super creepy. Hire a professional. It puts a little distance between you and the investigation. It makes it more credible. There’s more integrity.
Here’s the truth.
Here’s what I’ve run into. Police departments who want to investigate internally will sometimes hire private investigators.
A really simple example is when a police department requires their officers to live within the jurisdiction and they want to discover if their officers are living outside the city. Of course, there’s going to be problems with that.
Some officers aren’t going to want to. They’re going to want to live in a different place or further away for a variety of reasons.
A police department might, in those cases, hire an outside private investigator to do surveillance or other kinds of investigative work. Usually, in that kind of case, it comes down to surveillance, to verify that the officers are living outside the jurisdiction. So that’s one example of where a private investigator might be hired by a police department.
But, this is more common…
Normally, though, if a city is doing an investigation – and again, they’re looking inward at themselves – they’ll hire a law firm to do the investigation.
Then the law firm will hire investigators. They’ll either have in-house investigators working as employees of the law firm or they will hire outside private investigators.
That means a law firm might approach you for this work. This happens all the time for all sorts of cases.
When working for a city, the law firm might hire you to come in and do some investigative work, find some records, or do some interviews.
If the city believes there’s misconduct within the police department (or elsewhere within the city government) and wants an outside agency to do the investigation, again, for propriety’s sake – and not just the appearance of propriety, but for genuine proprietary – then they may hire you directly or a law firm who might hire you because if a city investigates itself, that just doesn’t seem right, even if it’s a legitimate investigation.
Those are the conditions under which I know private investigators can and will be hired by police departments, cities, municipalities, and other government organizations.
My question to you…
The question I have is, does this answer surprise you? Were you expecting something different? I’m just curious what you might have thought about before you got the real answer here.
In the meantime, this is Larry Kaye reminding you to do the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing.
Committed to your success and safety,
Larry Kaye, P.I.
P.S. – And, of course, don’t miss my special report titled… If You Want To be a Private Investigator Give Up… Unless You Do These Three Things. You can get it right here…
The first time I had to serve process papers I didn’t really know exactly what to do or how to do it and I want to keep you from having to struggle through it like I did so in this week’s video I share that case study with you just so you know you aren’t alone in this!
Of course I did all this without a process server badge, but if you’re ready to carry a badge (and it’s legal in your area!), check out my preferred badge here: FirstDefenderTacticalGear.com. (Yes, I do make money when you buy through this link, but it’s doesn’t cost you any more than going directly there.)
This Process Server badge is perfect for the professional conducting the business of serving court papers. Finally, a law enforcement quality badge for process servers!
And as I share in the video, clearly you can do this job without a badge, this Process Server badge is great I.D. for the professional conducting the business of serving court papers. I mean, finally there’s a law enforcement quality badge for process servers!
In the meantime, this is Larry Kaye reminding you to do the right thing, even if it’s the hard thing.
Committed to your success and safety,
Larry Kaye, P.I.
P.S. – Yes, I do make a small amount of money if you buy from them, but it’s from them and that mean you don’t pay any extra by using my link. Check ‘em out!
