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New York Allows Service of Divorce Papers via Facebook

April 8, 2015

ars technica reported on Monday that a New York County Supreme Court judge ruled that nurse Ellanora Baidoo can serve divorce papers (PDF) to her husband, Victor Sena Blood-Dzraku, via Facebook.

Some courts have permitted plaintiffs to use Facebook as a supplemental means of service since at least 2013, but Baidoo has requested that the social media service be the primary and only means of telling Blood-Dzraku that she wants a divorce.

The circumstances for the decision are unusual. Baidoo and Blood-Dzraku, both Ghanaian, were married in a civil service in 2009, but when Blood-Dzraku refused to marry in a traditional Ghanaian wedding ceremony, the relationship ended. The two never lived together, and Blood-Dzraku only kept in touch with Baidoo via phone and Facebook.

The only address Baidoo has for Blood-Dzraku leads to an apartment he vacated in 2011, and over the phone he told her that he has no permanent address and no place of employment. “He has also refused to make himself available to be served with divorce papers,” the judge wrote in his ruling.

Baidoo even hired a private investigator, but that turned up nothing. “[T]he post office has no forwarding address for him, there is no billing address linked to his pre-paid cell phone, and the Department of Motor Vehicles has no record of him.”

The judge expressed concerns with Facebook service in his ruling, noting that the Facebook account Blood-Dzraku uses might not actually belong to him and that Blood-Dzraku might not actually see the private Facebook message telling him he's being sued for divorce. To address the judge's concerns, Baidoo signed an affidavit saying that she knew the account belonged to Blood-Dzraku, and she included copies of several of their personal exchanges as well as proof that he regularly logged into his account and updated it.

The judge acknowledged that in cases like this, New York state law allows the plaintiff to serve the defendant via “publication,” or publishing the summons in a newspaper. “The problem, however, with publication service is that it is almost guaranteed not to provide a defendant with a notice of action for divorce, or any other lawsuit for that matter," the judge wrote. "The dangers of allowing somebody to be divorced and not know it are simply too great to allow notice to be given by publication, a form of service that, while neither novel or unorthodox, is essentially statutorily authorized non-service.”

Baidoo's lawyer, the judge said, can log into her Facebook account and, after identifying himself, send Blood-Dzraku a summons once a week for three weeks. The summons message must be accompanied by a phone call or a text message to alert him of the messages.

It sure seems like the right ruling, but very few divorces are likely to present this sort of fact scenario!

Hat tip to Mike Maschke.

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