Woman Allowed to Serve Divorce Papers on Facebook

The woman, who cannot physically locate her estranged husband, is left with no other options.

A New York State judge is allowing a woman to serve her husband with divorce papers using Facebook, according to ABC News. This is the first time that the state has approved this type of serving, though it is not the first time they have been asked.

The reason that Ellanora Baidoo is able to serve her husband online is because she has no idea where he /4/be located. Her attorney, Andrew Spinnell, told the judge that her husband had no lived up to his end of the promise to have a Ghanaian wedding ceremony. Now, she wants a divorce but the two have not had any contact since fall. The only way she had to contact him was through his cell phone number or his Facebook page.

Baidoo and her husband, Victor Sena Blood-Dzraku, never lived together. The only address she has was current in 2011, but he’s no longer there. They had even hired private investigators to find him, but they aren’t getting any leads.

“[Baidoo] has spoken with [her ex] by telephone on occasion and he has told her that he has no fixed address and no place of employment. He has also refused to make himself available to be served with divorce papers,” Cooper told the court. He then went on to tell that “The post office has no forwarding address for him, there is no billing address linked to his pre-paid cellphone, and the Department of Motor Vehicles has no record of him. Inasmuch as plaintiff is unable to find defendant, personal delivery of the summons to him is an impossibility.”

The Judge ruled: “Under the circumstance presented here, service by Facebook, albeit novel and non-traditional, is the form of service that most comports with the constitutional standards of due process,” Cooper wrote. “Not only is it reasonably calculated to provide defendant with notice that he is being sued for divorce, but every indication is that it will achieve what should be the goal of every method of service: actually delivering the summons to him.”

So far Blood-Dzraku has not responded to two of the written requests put in through Facebook.