You’ve Been Served: What’s Next? It can happen at home. It can happen at your place of work. It can even happen while you’re out shopping or on a vacation. No matter where it happens, once you’ve been served with court papers by a Fishers process server or other local process server in Indiana, it’s up to you to make the right decisions to avoid potentially costly legal penalties. According to Indiana’s Rules of Trial Procedure, service of process provides parties in a lawsuit with a summons and complaint and serves to inform parties of pending legal action. When people or organizations are served with a summons and complaint, they are required to respond to the complaint. Getting served with court papers can be a shock and also a cause of embarrassment if you’re served in a public place. Keeping your cool once you’ve been served is important, as is taking the right steps moving forward. Once you’ve been served with a complaint and summons, the first thing you should do is read the documents and familiarize yourself with their contents. Check the suit to ensure that you are the actual party being sued, as cases of mistaken identity do happen. By reading the summons and complaint against you, you learn more about the pending lawsuit, making you better able to discuss the case with an attorney, should you need one. You also learn how much time you have to file a response to the case. After reading the summons and complaint, you have a few decisions to make. One of the first decisions you should make is whether you’ll need an attorney. For small claims cases or debt collections, you may not need an attorney, as you should be able to either settle the case with the debt holder or other party in a small claims action or plead your case on your own. For more complicated legal matters, an attorney may be necessary. If you decide to handle the matter on your own, you’ll need to file an answer to the allegations in the complaint by the due date on the summons. There are a variety of sample court documents available on the Internet that can provide you with a template for how to respond to a summons and complaint. In general, you’ll write a few numbered paragraphs explaining your answer to the allegations in the suit. Responding to the suit by the deadline established in the summons is important, as parties in a legal action who fail to do so may be subject to a default judgment against them. Should you need to hire legal representation, search for an attorney with experience in dealing with the type of case that you’re involved in. If you’re facing a divorce action, hire a family lawyer. If it’s a personal injury suit, hire an attorney with experience in that field. Be sure that your attorney understands your case and the deadline for filing a response.
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