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Resources for Locating the Opposing Party

How We Help > Resources > Family Law and Domestic ViolenceResources for Locating the Opposing Party

Family Law and Domestic Violence

If you have been hurt, threatened or assaulted and fear for your or a family member’s safety, you may need a Protection or Harassment Order. A Domestic Abuse Protection Order is for people who have been in a close relationship (relatives, spouses or former spouses, people who have lived or are living together). It is granted because someone attempted, threatened, caused bodily injury, or intimidated the other person by verbal, written, or physical threat.
A Harassment Protection Order does not depend upon relationships, but requires a number of telephone or personal contacts that seriously terrify, threaten or intimidate the victim and serve no legitimate purpose.

Resources for Locating the Opposing Party

You need to let your spouse know that you have filed for divorce. This is called giving your spouse notice of the divorce case. You give your spouse notice by serving him or her with the Complaint for Dissolution. Service can be done personally or by publication.

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 Personal service is completed by either having the Sheriff serve your spouse with the Complaint for Dissolution or by having your spouse sign a Voluntary Appearance. By signing a voluntary appearance the opposing party is affirming to the court that they have received a copy of the Compliant for Divorce, they waive service by Sheriff and understand that the Divorce is pending in Court

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Service by publication is completed by following Nebraska law. You must ask the court for permission to serve your spouse by publication if you cannot locate your spouse to personally serve him or her with the Complaint. If the Court grants your request to serve your spouse by publication you must then run your publication in the newspaper. There are specific rules with respect to which newspaper you should run the publication in and how many times it must run. It is very important to follow these rules otherwise the Court may not recognize that your spouse has been served properly. Additionally, there is always a fee to run your publication in the paper and if you need to rerun your publication it could become very costly.

It is best to serve your spouse personally and not by publication. If you properly serve your spouse by publication, the court will be able to grant you a divorce and award custody. If you want the Court to award child support, spousal support, divide debts or make other property awards, the opposing party must have been “personally served.” This means that the person was handed the original Compliant for Divorce by the Sheriff, or that the opposing party signed a voluntary appearance. In order to ask the court for permission to serve your spouse by publication, you first need to make a good faith effort to locate your spouse. You need to check with friends, family and others to see if they know where your spouse is. If you do this and still cannot locate your spouse, you could try to find him or her through some resources that are available to the public. If you still cannot locate your spouse, you can request permission of the court to serve your spouse by publication.

In all court actions it is always better if you can personally serve the opposing party with the Compliant. If you don’t know where the opposing party is you might try to locate them with a little detective work. Some things you could do to try to locate your spouse include:

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 Personal service is completed by either having the Sheriff serve your spouse with the Complaint for Dissolution or by having your spouse sign a Voluntary Appearance. By signing a voluntary appearance the opposing party is affirming to the court that they have received a copy of the Compliant for Divorce, they waive service by Sheriff and understand that the Divorce is pending in Court

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You can search for them on the internet.

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Doing a Nebraska court records search on JUSTICE, which is Nebraska’s online court case database. If there is a court case involving your spouse, especially if it was filed more recently, it may contain their address. There is a fee charged for this search. You could see if the clerk of the district court or county court could help you with this as well. The JUSTICE database is located here

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Doing an online search to see if your spouse is incarcerated in a Nebraska jail or prison through VINE. The link is VINE. In Nebraska – anyone can access the VINE which tells if someone is in jail. It will also search other states that use VINE as well.

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Doing an online search to see if your spouse in incarcerated at a State of Nebraska facility run by searching the Nebraska Department of Corrections Website.

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Doing an online search to see if your spouse is incarcerated at a federal facility by searching the Federal Inmate Locator website.

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If your spouse is a registered sex offender, you could do an online search to see if his or her address is available through Nebraska Sex Offender Registry or another state’s registry.

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Requesting that the post office provide you with mailing address information for your spouse if you are requesting the information only for the purposes of serving your spouse with court documents, like your Complaint for Dissolution. The post office should release this information to you or tell you that they do not have mailing information for your spouse pursuant to 39 CFR 265.6(d)(5)(ii). The link to the regulation is here. You can contact the post office for more information.

Family Law & Domestic Voilence

Divorce/Legal Separation Questions

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Child Custody Questions

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Location the Opposing Party

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Finances and Domestic Violence

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Links

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Divorce Handbook

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