Divorce & Family Law Services

Where to File for Divorce in BC

When filing your Notice of Family Claim, you will need to choose which Supreme Court Registry is closest to where you live or most relevant to your case. For example, you can find a list of Supreme Court Registries in British Columbia here.

Once you have adequately prepared your Notice of Family Claim to the best of your abilities, it is ready to be filed with the Supreme Court. You will want to take four copies of your prepared and signed Notice of Family Claim to the Supreme Court when filing. The clerk will then take your payment for filing a new family law action, place the Supreme Court seal on the upper left-hand side of the Notice of Family Claim, and give you a court file number.

Benefits of using a Process Server

It is at this point where we can now step in and help. Using a professional process server makes things much less stressful and reduces your burden in the Divorce process. If you provide us with the true copies of your documents, we will need two identical copies of your filed Notice of Family Claim; one to serve the Respondent (your ex) and one to attach to our affidavit of personal service. The two copies are unnecessary if you provide us with a PDF copy of your filed Notice of Family Claim. We also need a recent picture of the Respondent for identification purposes. The picture is redundant if the Respondent provides government-issued photo identification at the time of service. However, we always request the picture up-front to minimize delays if the Respondent does not provide ID. The burden of proof for identification in Family Law matters is high. These matters can sometimes be highly contested and involve an immense amount of family property and family debt.

Upon successful service of the Notice of Family Claim to the Respondent, we will prepare an Affidavit of Personal Service and return it to the Claimant. The Claimant will then want to file the Affidavit of Personal Service with the Supreme Court Registry. The Respondent has 30 days from the time of service to file a Response to Family Claim or a Counterclaim.

You will want an impartial third party to serve the documents on your behalf, as being involved in the claim prohibits you from doing it yourself. In addition, a friend or other family member can effect service. Still, it is always advisable to hire a professional process server to get the job done for you to avoid any critical mistakes by someone who has never served documents before.

If you have gone through the court process correctly, you are now equipped with the knowledge to use our service request form properly! We always prefer our clients to use our service request form, as it minimizes the time it takes to put your file together on our end and get it out for service.