PARTY GRANTED RELIEF ON DEFAULT COULDN’T SHOW PAPERS WERE PROPERLY SERVED
After a final custody order which awarded her sole legal and physical custody of the “subject child” (on default) was vacated by the Bronx County Family Court, for lack of proper service of the underlying paperwork, the child’s paternal grandmother, E.R., appealed to the Appellate Division, First Department.
On its review, the AD1 noted that while E.R. was authorized by court order to have the paperwork relayed via text, her process server was unable to show the papers were, in fact, transmitted. Among other things, at a traverse hearing -- where the propriety of service was reviewed -- E.R.’s process service couldn’t produce a copy of the text, and acknowledged that his recollection was “kind of fuzzy.”
Because E.R. was unable to “carry her burden of proving that service was properly effected,” the AD1 left the outcome undisturbed, even though E.R. claimed to have informed the respondent of the proceeding’s pendency.
Now that wasn’t fuzzy at all.
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