When the El Mirage defendant is in uniform: serving near Luke

El Mirage street near Luke Air Force Base, serving papers on a military member

Luke Air Force Base is a near neighbour of El Mirage. Being this close to a base means some people with El Mirage addresses are active duty, reservists, or married to someone who is.

If one of them is the other party in your case, serving them is mostly the same as serving anyone else. Mostly. Two things are different, and one of them can undo your whole case if you skip it.

The base itself is not a front door

A process server has no right to drive onto a military installation to deliver papers. Access is controlled by the base, and a civilian without a reason to be there, a sponsor or a pass is not getting through the gate. This is true even if the person lives in on base housing.

In practice, that rarely matters for El Mirage cases. Most service members who live in town live in ordinary houses on ordinary streets, and they are served the same way as their neighbours: at home, in person, or by leaving the papers with another adult who lives there, as Arizona's civil rules allow. The timing is what changes. Shift work, temporary duty elsewhere and training cycles mean someone can be gone for weeks with no warning to you.

If the person really is only reachable on the installation, talk to your lawyer. There are channels for that, and they go through the base, not around it.

The part that can undo your case: the SCRA

The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is a federal law that protects people on active duty from losing civil cases simply because they could not show up. The section that matters most for service is 50 U.S.C. 3931.

Before a court enters a default judgment against someone who has not appeared, it must require the plaintiff to file an affidavit. The affidavit says whether the defendant is in military service and gives the facts supporting that statement, or says the plaintiff could not determine it. If the defendant is in military service, the court cannot enter judgment until it appoints a lawyer to represent them. A false affidavit carries criminal penalties.

This applies in justice court, in Superior Court family cases at the Northwest Regional Center in Surprise, and everywhere else a default is possible. It is the plaintiff's job, not the process server's. But it is closely tied to service, because the moment a server reports "served, no answer filed," the next question your court will ask is whether the defendant is military.

How people check

The Department of Defense runs a public SCRA website through the Defense Manpower Data Center. You enter the person's details and it returns a certificate showing whether they are on active duty. Many courts accept that certificate as support for the affidavit. You need accurate identifying information to get a useful result, which is one more reason to gather a date of birth early.

A server can help in a smaller way. If, during service, the person mentions being on active duty, or there are obvious signs (a uniform, base stickers, a spouse who says "he's deployed"), a good server notes it on their report. That observation does not replace the official check, but it can save you from filing an affidavit that turns out to be wrong.

Deployment and delay

If the person is deployed or away on orders, you may not be able to serve them at all for a while. The SCRA also allows a service member who has notice of a case to ask for a stay, a pause, when military duty keeps them from responding. That is a request the service member makes to the court, and a judge decides it. It is not something a process server can promise or prevent.

For you, the practical effect is simple. Build in time. A case against a service member is rarely the one to file the week before a deadline.

Family cases deserve extra care

Divorce, custody and support cases involving service members carry their own complications: where the case can be filed, how military pay is treated, what happens to custody during a deployment. These are lawyer questions. If you are on either side of one, get advice before you serve.

Booking a server

Tell the server up front that the person is or may be military, and give them whatever schedule you know. The servers on our El Mirage process servers page are on the Arizona Supreme Court's certified list. What service of process is covers the basics, and if the address you have is a few years old, read when the El Mirage address on your papers is out of date. Everything else we have on the city is on the El Mirage town page.

Before you file anything that could end in a default, run the SCRA search and print the certificate. It takes a few minutes and you will need it anyway.

See the board: everyone in El Mirage · process servers only.