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HAGUE CONVENTION

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PROCESS SERVICE

  SPAIN

  GIBRALTAR

PORTUGAL

UNITED KINGDOM

  IRELAND

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What is the Convention?

The Hague Convention on international process service is a mechanism to allows for the service of papers issued from the court in one county on the Recipient in another.

The Convention only applies to countries that have signed up to it. For those countries it facilitates a method of service that is more difficult to challenge in the court of origin.

The issue of whether a particular set of documents MUST be served through Hague Convention will be governed by the laws of the country WHERE THEY ORIGINATE.

The methodology is quite straight forward in as much that you sent the court papers together with the appropriate Hague procedural documents to the Central Authority designated to accept them in the country in which they are to be served. Once they have been served by an assigned official, normally an officer of the court, they will be sent back to you with a Hague Certificate of Service.

This procedure sounds simple and efficient,  but is it?

Many international lawyers who have been involved in the Hague procedure will confirm experiences of ludicrous bureaucracy, lack of communication, horrendous delays and gross incompetence. Many have experienced:

• Original Papers being lost in the system and not surfacing for months and sometimes never.

• Papers being returned without being served without explanation.

• Papers being returned without being served for dubious reasons.

• Papers being returned without being served after many months.

• No communication whatsoever on the progress of the serve.

• Information on the progress of the serve being impossible to obtain.

• Papers being incorrectly served.

• The wrong person being served.

• The wrong papers being served.

• Court hearing and trial dates being missed.

• The procedure nearly always taking at least 2 months or more

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Process Servers Spain do NOT serve papers via the Hague Convention procedures in Spain or Portugal.

If you require papers to be served in this manner you should apply DIRECTLY to the correct central authority shown below;