Judge Authorizes Service by Facebook in Divorce

A woman can serve her divorce papers on her hard-to-find husband through his Facebook account, a judge has ruled.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper allowed the plaintiff wife to serve the divorce summons through a private message to the husband, while acknowledging the woman's request for sole, not supplemental, service through the message, was a "radical departure" from traditional ideas of what constituted service of process.

"In this age of technological enlightenment, what is for the moment unorthodox and unusual stands a good chance of sooner or later being accepted and standard, or even outdated and passé," Cooper wrote in his March 27 decision in Baidoo v. Blood-Dzraku, 310947/2014.

Some judges have allowed service through Facebook, but in addition to other methods. For instance, a Staten Island Family Court support magistrate also required mailing the petition to the last known address (NYLJ, Sept. 17, 2014).

Here, the couple married in 2009 but never lived together; the husband vacated his last known address in 2011, the wife said.

Cooper said the woman submitted a court-ordered affidavit to vouch that the account was, in fact, that of her husband. She included exchanges the pair had on Facebook.

Cooper said service by publication was authorized by state law.

"The problem, however, with publication service is that it is almost guaranteed not to provide a defendant with notice of the action for divorce, or any other lawsuit for that matter," he said.

Andrew Spinell of Manhattan represents the wife.