Is it legal for my husband to be present while I am being served? 4 Answers as of January 26, 2012

Under California law, it is common for a Petitioner/Plaintiff to have a friend, relative, adult child serve the Respondent. So long as it is not the Petitioner (spouse in your case) handing it to you and saying you've been served, but his presence does not invalidate the service. You do not have to actually take the papers in your hands to be served. S/he can place them at your feet, on the windshield of your car if you are in it and see him do it, on your doorstep if you are just inside a screen door. In these circumstances they usually say or yell "You are served", but it is not necessary. Sometimes you can be served by the papers being handed to an adult living with you and told to give them to you. This is called substituted service. Under certain circumstances you can be served by the papers being nailed to your front door and then a copy of the documents mailed to you. If several Summons and complaints are to be served, one process server rolled them up and shaped them like a football. When the party to be served jumped out of his car and ran toward his house, the process server threw the football shaped documents at the runner and hit him in the back and yelled "You're Served" and it was declared a legal service. No matter how you receive a Summons and Petition/complaint, you cannot ignore it. You can contest the service, but usually you will be served again when you walk into the courtroom. A Summons and Petition can be mailed to you with an "Acknowledgement of Service form". You then have a certain length of time to sign and return it. If you don't and the party or his attorney has to hire a professional process service, the cost will be charged to you. Evading service is also against the law. (although rarely prosecuted). People treat family law as being just filling out forms. The last I heard the largest percentage of attorneys being sued for malpractice is family law cases, and we are supposed to know the law. Trying to represent yourself, when attorneys trained in family law, are often found to be negligent, especially if your spouse has an attorney, is very risky. I have found that in family law, attorneys usually pay for themselves by obtaining a better result for their client than they would get representing themselves. Where an attorney represents a client against an unrepresented party, usually, the Attorney controls what happens in the Courtroom. I personally recommend, if the two of you are capable of treating this as a business dispute and try to agree to a fair and reasonable result that you may want to mediate your dissolution with a neutral mediator who will answer your questions as what the law states, but has the experience to come up with compromise ideas which carry out the wishes of the parties. Depending on the income of the parties another method is collaborative Negotiation with a team of experts, each party has a divorce coach, whose hourly rate is lower than the Attorney. The parties save money by having a financial adviser who looks at your finances and the tax consequences of various scenarios of the division of your property, support orders, a child expert, if there are children, who becomes the spokesperson for the best interests of the children. While there are a lot of people to pay, but the Attorney is the only one who works the whole case the other are just experts brought in for specific information which you probably would need if you choose litigation which is the most expensive of all.

It is valid for your husband to be present when you are being served as long as someone else does the service. I am not sure why the website states it was not proper. But he can be there while you are being served. You have 30 days to respond from the date you are served.

It is legal for your husband to be present when you are served. You should promptly consult and preferably retain an experienced Family Law Attorney to represent you and file a Motion to set aside your default.

Yes. He just cannot be the one giving you the papers.