Practice area 10
Service of Process & Locates
Getting documents into the right hands, and proving it — including where somebody has decided not to be found.
Licensed Illinois private detective agency · Established 1991 · 35+ years
Service sounds like the simplest thing an investigator does, and it is the one most often done badly. A defective affidavit, service on the wrong person, or an address that was never current can cost a case months and occasionally the case itself.
The difficulty is almost never the handing over. It is establishing that the address is current before anybody travels, working out when the person is actually there, and recognising the difference between somebody who is out and somebody who is avoiding. Each needs a different approach, and the second needs patience rather than more attempts at the same hour.
Where the address is wrong or unknown, the matter becomes a locate first and a service second. That is the same research described under background work — records, filings and verification, followed by field confirmation that the person is genuinely there before a server is sent.
What this covers
Included in an engagement.
- Service of summons, subpoenas, citations and orders throughout Illinois
- Skip tracing and address verification before any attempt is made
- Documented attempts with dates, times and observations
- Affidavits of service prepared properly for filing
- Stake-outs for evasive recipients
- Rush and same-day service where a deadline requires it
Said plainly
What this service cannot do.
Worth reading before you instruct anybody in this profession, including us.
- We do not trespass, and we do not misrepresent who we are in order to get a door opened.
- Service rules differ by document and by court. Your attorney directs the method; we carry it out and document it.
- Some people cannot be located from the available records. Where that is the position, we say so rather than billing attempts indefinitely.
Related
Often instructed alongside this.
Service of Process & Locates
Tell us what has happened.
The first conversation costs nothing, goes no further, and you will get an honest view of whether this is something we can help with — including when the answer is that it is not.