A Nova Scotia judge has refused to let a man serve his daughter court papers through Facebook.
The man was seeking sole decision-making responsibility for his grandson, who lives with him, and said his daughter was unreliable at meeting face-to-face but used her Facebook account regularly.
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He asked the Nova Scotia Supreme Court for authorization to serve documents under the Parenting and Support Act through the social media platform rather than in person.
But in a decision released Thursday, Associate Chief Justice Lawrence O’Neil said the man failed to demonstrate unusual measures were necessary.
“It appears the respondent can be located and personally served. There is no evidence she is evading personal service. There is no evidence any effort to personally serve the respondent has been made,” he wrote.
“It must be remembered that the first obligation is to personally serve and only after an explanation as to why that is not possible should an order for substituted service be sought.”
The man said his daughter rarely visited and he did not have her phone number, saying she usually contacted him. He said he would communicate with her through his other daughter.
O’Neil, of the court’s family division, cited a 2016 Ontario Court of Justice case when, after trying other methods of personal service, a social worker was authorized by a court to contact a child’s father on Facebook. The father initially responded and then stopped.
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The court found the Jewish Family and Child Service of Greater Toronto had made sufficient efforts to locate and contact the father and found that he likely blocked the social worker.
The Ontario court ordered the message to be sent through a different Facebook account and set out the exact phrasing to be used in the message.
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