At her wits end trying to serve divorce papers on her evasive husband, a New York woman filed an application with the court asking for “service by alternative means” in order to serve her husband via Facebook. For years, the woman’s attorney has had no luck finding the husband to begin the divorce process. When the wife finally reached the husband by phone, he reported that he had no place of employment or fixed address and refused to make himself available to be served.
After exhausting all other ways of serving the husband papers so that his client could move on with her life, the attorney approached the court with the novel way of serving the divorce papers. In the decision, the justice said the “advent and ascendency of social media,” means sites like Facebook and Twitter are the “next frontier” as “forums through which a summons can be delivered.” With that, the attorney has served the husband ‘social media style’, but has not received a response. No worries for the wife – if the husband continues to hold-out and refuses the Facebook summons, the judge will likely move forward with a “divorce by default”.
Source: CNN.com, “Divorce by Facebook: New York Woman Gets OK to File Papers Online”, By Stephanie Gallman, April 6, 2015