Legal Question in Family Law in Nevada

You must make an effort to locate your spouse. Contact friends, family members, employers, coworkers, or anyone who might know where your spouse can be found. Search for your spouse online through social networking sites and by email. You can also check the Post Office for forwarding information. Check with any source that might lead you to a good address for your spouse. This is called doing your �due diligence.� If you cannot locate your spouse after your search, the judge may require someone other than you to do the search In that case, you would want to hire a process server, to do the "due diligence" search and have that process server fill out the "Affidavit of Due Diligence" showing the places they searched.

If neither you nor your process server can find your spouse, you can ask the Court for permission to serve by publishing the summons in a newspaper and mailing a copy of the summons and complaint to his or her last known address. To ask the Court for permission to serve by publication, follow these steps:

Mail a copy of the summons and complaint to your spouse's last known address. Mail this by regular mail (not certified mail). After mailing the summons and complaint, fill out a Certificate of Mailing indicating when, where, and to whom you mailed the documents. File this with the court.

After mailing the summons and complaint, fill out the following forms: The Affidavit to Serve by Publication must be completed by you. The Affidavit of Due Diligence must be completed by whoever did the search for the Defendant. File the two affidavits with the Court.

Submit the proposed Order to Serve by Publication to the judge assigned to your case. If the judge believes that your spouse truly cannot be found after reviewing your papers, the judge will sign the order allowing you to serve by publication. If not, you will receive a memo from the judge's staff letting you know what needs to be fixed.

If the judge signs your Order to Serve by Publication, contact a newspaper to arrange for publication. You will have to provide the newspaper with a copy of the Summons and the Order to Serve by Publication, and make sure the summons is published once a week for 4 consecutive weeks. File the Affidavit of Publication with the court. Once the publication has run for 4 consecutive weeks, file the Affidavit of Publication with the court. Your spouse is considered served. Then you need to move forward with the default and the divorce. Or you could turn this over to an attorney who will take all these steps for you..