Dispatch desk / Coverage / the Dominican Republic
Service of process in the Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic generates more US instructions than any other Spanish-speaking island we cover — property disputes in Punta Cana and Cabarete, family matters across the diaspora, judgment enforcement, and defendants who have simply gone home. It is also the jurisdiction where an address is most often wrong.
What the Dominican Republic desk handles
- Personal service of summonses, complaints, petitions and subpoenas
- Divorce, custody and family documents, including diaspora matters
- Property and title disputes in Punta Cana, Bavaro, Cabarete and Sosua
- Judgment enforcement and debt documents
- Corporate service at a registered office or place of business
- Trace and locate before service — the largest part of our Dominican work
- Discreet enquiries to confirm an address before any attempt
- Hotel surveillance across the Dominican Republic
- Document retrieval and certified copies
- Swearing of the Affidavit of Service before a Notary Public or attorney
If what you need is not on this list, ask. We will tell you plainly whether we can assist.
Hotel surveillance
We provide hotel surveillance throughout the Dominican Republic, particularly in the popular tourist locations of Punta Cana, Bávaro, La Romana, Santo Domingo, Juan Dolio, Boca Chica, Puerto Plata, Sosúa, Cabarete and Las Terrenas.
Tell us the hotel, location and dates involved. We will confirm availability, travel arrangements and fees before accepting instructions. All assignments are subject to lawful access and a review of the proposed work.
Dominican addresses: why yours may not be enough
We say this on the Spanish page too, because it is the single biggest cause of failed service here.
A usable Dominican address needs the sector, not just the street. Street names repeat across the Distrito Nacional and across Santiago — the same calle exists in several sectors, and without the sector we are guessing. If the address has an apartment or building number and you have it, send it: an eight-storey block with no apartment number is eight doors.
Outside the cities, many houses are not numbered at all. People are located by relation to something — beside the colmado, behind the church, the yellow house on the corner. That is a real address locally and we can work with it, but it needs a name people recognise, which is often a nickname rather than the name on your complaint.
So send us everything you have: the full name as it appears on the document, any nickname, the employer, the vehicle, a telephone number, a relative’s name. Every one of those is a thread. In this jurisdiction the trace is usually the work, and the service is the easy part.
If your only address came from a property contract, a bank record or a file more than a year old, tell us. We will verify it first. A verified address costs far less than three attempts at a door that was never right.
Timing, and what comes back to you
Santo Domingo and Santiago are usually quick once the address is confirmed. Where the address needs verifying — which is most of the time — we quote the enquiry and the service together, in writing, before we start. The Hague route, where it applies, runs on the central authority’s timescale, not ours, and we will say so plainly rather than promise a date we do not control.
- 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 Dominican Republic
Because our desk works in Spanish and speaks to people in their own language, which is the difference between a neighbour who helps and a neighbour who closes the gate.
Because Mike covers Hispaniola for us and has done for years. And because we will tell you honestly when a Punta Cana address is a holiday rental rather than a residence — before you pay for an attempt.
We work in Spanish and report to you in English. There is a full Spanish version of this information at es.html, written — not machine-translated — for Dominican and Puerto Rican correspondents. The Hague Service Convention entered into force for the Dominican Republic on 1 October 2024, so ask us about the correct route before you send: we will tell you whether personal service by us is appropriate for your document, or whether it must be transmitted through the central authority. Either way we handle it and you keep one point of contact.