Monday, 20 July 2015

Points need to be observed while choosing a service of process in Australia ?

These days, service of process has become a complex issue due to excessive formalities and burdened Australian laws that need to be followed in every process. A plaintiff has to be very much careful, attentive and knowledgeable before taking a decision of serving legal papers in Australia. Because, a wrong decision may invalidate his entire attempts and he will have no results. That’s why it is advised to be fully observant and strictly follow the prescribed guidelines for serving documents and legal papers to a defendant anywhere in the country.  

When a matter comes to serving legaldocuments in any Australian state then first of all you need to know that in which state you are serving your papers. As present Australian laws provides several type of services which can be selected depending upon the location. Here it is necessary to note that these services are varying with the change in the territory. So, before selecting a mode of service to serve your documents to a defendant in the Australian state, you need to verify that what kind of service is valid in that territory. It would allow you to have valid service in the specific region.  

The second most important point needs to be observed are you sending your papers using Hague convention service. Do you know that Australia is a signatory country of Hague conventions, therefore all the rules and regulation set under above convention also applies on the services used for serving judicial or extrajudicial documents of civil and commercial matters. Hence, a plaintiff has to take extra caution in getting familiarize with the mandatory characters of this convention usually set by the requesting courts. Since the service of process through Hague convention must comply with the existing laws of destination and requesting country.

As I said above that there are several methods offered by Australian laws which can be used by a plaintiff as per his capacity and needs. But things remain challenging due to unclear and incomplete information rendered by the Australian authorities in regards to some specific terms used in Hague service conventions.  A plaintiff should have complete guidelines of these terms before putting in practice. If a service of process is initiated using specific terms and without understanding their viability and found not complying with the specified terms of convention then the process will be void. 

Therefore, it is advised to get complete information about the Hague service convention before selecting a method of serving paper using this convention. Other than that there are alternative methods of serving legal papers which can be used after verifying their validity in a specific territory where you are planning to serve your papers. 

In the present circumstances, a plaintiff may choose alternative methods for serving papers in addition to the existing methods of serving papers from Central authority. Here, I want to bring to your notice that each state is having separate central authority. So when a plaintiff is planning to serve their papers through this channel then he should apply in the right central authority. Today, a large number of plaintiffs are making the mistake of serving their legal papers either to the federal or wrong central authority. It consumes extra time for the papers to come to right central authority and imposes extra delay in the service.  

Next time, when you are planning to serve your legal documents to a defendant anywhere in the Australia then kindly observe these points to have a successful and speedy service of process.   






  


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