If you're serving a lawsuit on a defendant who lives outside the United States, one treaty will almost certainly determine your options: the 1965 Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters — usually just called the Hague Service Convention. This guide explains what it actually does, who it applies to, and how attorneys use it in practice.
What the Hague Service Convention Actually Does
The Convention creates a standardized, treaty-based channel for delivering legal documents — summonses, complaints, subpoenas — from a court in one member country to a defendant located in another member country. Instead of relying on ad hoc diplomatic requests, each signatory country designates a Central Authority responsible for receiving incoming requests and arranging service under its own domestic law.
As of 2026, more than 80 countries are parties to the Convention, including most of the world's major economies: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, China, Brazil, India, and Mexico among them. Critically, the treaty only binds countries that have actually joined it — plenty of countries with significant litigation activity, including several in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, are not parties at all.
The Central Authority Process, Step by Step
In the United States, service under the Convention typically works like this: the requesting party completes a standardized request form (often called the USM-94 form), attaches the documents to be served along with any required translation, and forwards the package to the destination country's designated Central Authority. That authority reviews the request for compliance, arranges for service through whatever method is valid under its own domestic law — usually a local court or bailiff — and returns a formal Certificate of Service under Article 6 once complete.
Processing time varies enormously by country. Some Central Authorities, particularly in Northern Europe, routinely complete requests within two to four months. Others can take a year or more, and a small number of countries have Central Authorities with a documented history of slow or inconsistent responses.
Article 10: The Alternative Channels Some Countries Allow
Article 10 of the Convention permits three additional service methods — unless a country has specifically objected to them: (a) sending documents directly by postal channels, (b) service through judicial officers of the destination country, and (c) service by any person interested in the proceeding directly through the destination country's judicial officers. Many countries, including Japan (as of 2018), Switzerland, and China, have objected to all three, making the Central Authority the only valid route. Others, including Canada, Portugal, and Morocco, have not objected at all, giving litigants a genuinely faster alternative.
This means the exact rules are country-specific, and assuming one country's approach applies to another is one of the most common — and costly — mistakes attorneys make in cross-border litigation.
When the Convention Doesn't Apply
The Convention only governs civil and commercial matters — it has no application to criminal proceedings. It also doesn't apply if the address of the person to be served is unknown, since the entire mechanism depends on a Central Authority being able to locate and serve a specific address. And of course, it simply doesn't apply at all if the destination country hasn't joined the treaty; in those cases, litigants generally fall back to diplomatic Letters Rogatory, an Inter-American Convention route in parts of Latin America, or a motion for court-ordered alternative service under FRCP Rule 4(f)(3).