How Do You Serve Someone A Court Order When You Can't Find Out Their Address

[ganesh]

To cut a long story very short someone owes me money-I have enough evidence of this loan and I have phone details and e-mail address but they have now moved and I can't find out the new address. I can't even fill in the small claims form in without it and it seems daft that someone can get away with it just by moving. Any ideas?

[Epona]

OP I wasn't suggesting you do something illegal, opening a fake FB account is not illegal. You can take the moral high ground but it will not get you anywhere believe me I've been there.

[Eve]

Is the person who owed you in England/Wales?

You could try sending in your claim form with an application form (N244) and £45 fee (on top of the court fee for issuing the claim - unless you qualify for a fee remission) and ask in the application if the court will give permission for the claim to be served also by email, giving all the reasons you have for this. You can download it from the court form finder:

http://hmctsformfinder.justice.gov.uk/HMCTS/FormFinder.do

The fee remission guide is EX106A.

It would then be up to a Judge. You would need an address on it (even last known) as Registry Trust won't register a CCJ without it. Even if the forms are returned as undelivered, provided the address is appropriate then you could still go for default judgment if there is no response to the claim form in the appropriate time. There is the issue of them not being at that address though a CCJ should show up on their credit record which might make they pay up.

For further info see guidance notes N1C (available from link above).

Other booklets you might find useful are the EX301 and EX202 then EX304 once the claim has been issued.

If you get a CCJ then you can go for enforcement options if not paid.

For High Court enforcement you send in a form to be signed and stamped by the County Court who will return it to you to send in to the High Court with a £60 fee. See guidance booklet EX321 for further info on enforcement. You can also download guidance booklets from the link above.

You could also pop to your local County Court to ask at the counter for further advise.

[ganesh]

Thanks, so you reckon they might send an e-mail too if I explain what happened? I may try this route. At least he would know that the court had made the order even if he didn't receive it.
That way may be enough as he probably doesn't believe I will take that far because he knows I don't have an address.I was just thinking that the court would just reject the claim if they knew I didn't know his current address.

[Eve]

This is why you would probably need to make an application for a judge to consider the circumstances and say whether they think it could be served by email. If so, the claim might be returned to you to serve yourself and provide proof to the court.

Proper service would need to be confirmed to the court (possibly to the satisfaction of a judge, depending on what they say) before they could deal with an request for a judgment.

[ganesh]

I'm confused now eva, I was looking at the Small Claims court N1 form and going from there. Is this the wrong one?

[Eve]

No, you need the N1 claim form, send it in with an N244 application form with the latter asking whether you can serve the claim by email.

[ganesh]

Ok I see , both together, thanks for your help.

[Debs28]

I thought you could use email to serve someone and didnt need permission of a court. As long as you have some sort of certificate of service to show you have served. If you are serving via email, you would need to scan the documents returned to you by the court - otherwise they wont have a court seal on and wont be legal documents. As a side note, i thought you didnt get a ccj against someone just with a Judgment but only when you moved forward to enforcing the order?

[Eve]

A Judgment is a County Court Judgment, hence a CCJ.