Dispatch desk / Coverage / The Bahamas
Service of process in The Bahamas
Most process serving in The Bahamas instructions we receive are for New Providence — Nassau, Cable Beach, Paradise Island — or for Freeport on Grand Bahama. The work that goes wrong is nearly always the work out on the Family Islands, because a US firm quite reasonably assumes The Bahamas is one place you can drive across. It is seven hundred islands.
What the The Bahamas desk handles
- Personal service of summonses, complaints, petitions and subpoenas
- Corporate service at a registered office or place of business in Nassau or Freeport
- Service on trustees, directors and registered agents of Bahamian companies
- Divorce, family and probate documents
- Statutory demands and letters before action
- Trace and locate before service, where the address you hold is stale
- Family Island service — Abaco, Eleuthera, Exuma, Andros, Bimini, Long Island and the rest. Additional transport fees may apply. We shall tell you in advance.
- Swearing of the Affidavit of Service before a Notary Public or attorney
- Court document retrieval in Nassau
Special Services....ssssh!
Ask about our Bahamas Special Services.
- Immigration check. Flight itinerary date/time of arrival/departure. Given address
- Property Ownership check
- Vessel Ownership check. Checking vessel name, date of arrival and port docked
- Civil / Insolvency check
- Company Record / Registrar check
- Birth/Marriage/Death Certificate or Records check
- Criminal / Civil Record check. You provide the full name and date of birth
Most turnarounds are within 2 - 10 days.
Nassau is straightforward. The Family Islands are not.
Should you only have a partial address, tell us. Part of our service is to make sure service is correct, which includes serving at the right address.
On New Providence an address is usually workable: a subdivision name, a street and a house. Gated communities on Paradise Island and along Cable Beach need a different approach, since the gate will not simply let a stranger through — that is a matter of patience and of knowing when people come and go, not of arguing with a guard.
Out on the Family Islands there is often no street address at all. The settlement name is the address. Somebody is known as “the fisherman past the clinic” and that is genuinely how they are found. Reaching Abaco, Eleuthera, Exuma or Andros means a scheduled flight or a mail boat, so an attempt there is a day of travel, not an hour of driving. We will tell you that before you instruct, and we will price the travel into the fixed fee rather than adding it afterwards.
If your only address is a post office box in Nassau, say so at the outset. A box is not a place a person can be served, but it is often a good starting point for a trace — and we would rather begin there than bill you for three failed attempts at a building that was never a home.
Timing, and what comes back to you
New Providence is usually a matter of days rather than weeks. A Family Island attempt depends on the flight or boat schedule, and we will give you a realistic date before you commit, not an optimistic one.
- A court-ready Affidavit or Certificate of Service, sworn locally
- A record of every attempt — date, time, address and who was spoken to
- A description of the person served and the circumstances of the handover
- Photographs of the location where lawful and practical
- Progress updates by email or WhatsApp while the matter is live
- A reasoned report if service cannot be effected, with what we established about the true address
- A single point of contact who knows your file, start to finish
Why instruct us in The Bahamas
Because we will tell you when the address you hold is a post office box, a rental that turned over two years ago, or a company’s registered office where nobody has ever sat. That conversation costs you one email and saves you a wasted fee.
Because the same person handles your matter from the first email to the sworn affidavit, and because we have been doing this in the region since 1988 — long enough to know which settlements have a clinic, a church and one road, and which have an airstrip that only takes light aircraft.
English throughout, so nothing needs translating. Ask us about the correct service route before you send: the Hague Service Convention applies in The Bahamas, and we will tell you whether personal service by us is appropriate for your particular document or whether it must go through the central authority.