When you file any type of civil case with the courts, you are required to notify the other party of the legal action being pursued against them. This is a basic right of due process, and it is the right of every US citizen. You must know about a legal matter to defend yourself against it. So the courts require proof that legal papers were served to those parties for your case to move forward.
But what do you do when you can’t find the person that needs to be served? While some people skip town when they know they are about to be served, the majority of the time skip traces are needed simply because life happens. Here are some of the more common situations in which you might need skip tracing.
The target recently moved due to career, family, or other cause.
Quite often the fact that someone has recently moved just before they need to be served is nothing more than coincidence. There are a lot of things that can happen to cause an individual or family to move, and not everyone leaves forwarding addresses. That can require skip tracing to find where they moved to so they can be served in the new location.
A small business closes their doors.
This is becoming more and more of a problem with the small business failures the pandemic has brought on. Some “businesses” are nothing more than one person working out of their home as a “freelancer.” While this is perfectly legal to do, it makes things murky when the business closes. How things are handled depends on the structure of the business, which determines who is legally responsible for damages. Sometimes uncovering the true responsible party or finding the independent proprietor after a move requires skip tracing.
A tenant up for eviction has flown the coop.
If you’ve been waiting for the national moratorium on evictions to expire before filing, you aren’t alone. Most landlords have been fairly lackadaisical about filing evictions for a while now, because the cases weren’t going anywhere regardless. But that time is just about upon us, and its time to start serving those 3 and 7 day notices. If you get to serving the actual eviction papers and they can’t be found because they’ve already vacated, you’ll need a skip tracer to locate them for remaining payment due.
There are many other situations in which you might need to hire a skip tracer to find the person that needs to be served. Our process servers are experienced skip tracers as well, so we can get your papers served no matter what. Contact us today to get started.
