How to Divorce Someone You Can’t Locate: Service by Publication

In a situation where, in spite of your best efforts, you have been unable to locate your spouse, you can still get a divorce. You will need to serve the petition for divorce and the summons by placing a notice to your spouse in the local newspaper. This method of service is known as service by publication.

Attempting to Locate Your Spouse

To serve your spouse in this manner, you will need to get a court order allowing you to do so. Before a judge will grant the order, you will need to demonstrate to the court that you have undertaken a thorough, yet unsuccessful, search to locate your spouse.

Depending on where you live, your search for your spouse may include the following strategies:

• Searching phone directories in locations where your spouse may be living
  
• Contacting your spouse’s relatives to gather information
  
• Making a request under the Freedom of Information Act to the US Postmaster for your spouse’s forwarding address
  
• Contacting trade unions or professional associations your spouse may belong to
  
• Writing a letter to the US Military asking for information about your spouse’s whereabouts
  
• Searching Department of Motor Vehicle records
  
• Canvassing your spouse’s former neighborhood to ask if anyone knows where he or she is currently living
  
• Asking the local and state police and/or the Department of Corrections for help
  

Your lawyer may suggest that you hire a private investigator to help in your search for your spouse. If you are being represented by a large law firm, there may be an investigator on staff who can provide assistance.

Requirements Vary by Jurisdiction

Your lawyer will be able to advise you exactly what steps you need to take to satisfy the requirement to conduct a search for a spouse. Keep detailed records of all of your efforts to locate your spouse. This information will be used as part of the documents will need to submit to the Court to get an order for service by publication.

Here’s how service by publication works: A notice is published--usually in the “Legal Notices” section of your local newspaper. The judge in the case will determine how often the notice will be published. Usually, you will be ordered to publish it once a week for between four and six weeks. After that point, if your spouse has not responded to the ad, then you have, in fact, “served” your divorce papers.