A US attorney has served a petition for divorce via social networking site Facebook.
San Diego attorney Paul Staley was asked to serve the petition on behalf of a client whose wife who had left the US years before. There was no known current address, but Staley found several women with her name on Facebook.
He decided to try and extend a California law which allows people petitioning for divorce to publish a note of the proceedings in a newspaper in some limited circumstances, in order to give the other person notice of the divorce. He asked a judge to let him use Facebook instead and, in what for what is thought to be a first for the state, the judge granted permission.
The divorce has since been completed.
That’s very interesting – I have a similar situation where I do not know where the other party is living. I may try petititoning the court in Sacramento to see if I can get permission to do this as well. Thank you for publishing this as I had not seen anything about it here!