In the UK and the USA, the common way to deliver official court papers to a debtor / defendant is personal service (see for example this video by a State of Colorado judge). As seen in many movies and TV series, someone approaches the debtor, asks him „Are you Mr Neverpay“ and – if the person is careless enough to respond „yes“ – hands over the documents and says „you have been served“. Then the person delivering the papers quickly walks away just in case the person served gets angry – which happens quite often. In the anglo-american legal system there are commercial service providers called process servers (for USA see this directory), although court papers may also be served by sheriffs (USA) or bailiffs (UK). Process servers live quite a dangerous life and sometimes even get stabbed or shot, especially when serving eviction or divorce papers.

Now, in Germany, personal serving of court papers or other legal documents is much less important, because – unlike in Britain or the USA, courts generally accept other methods of serving papers, especially leaving the documents in the defendant’s letterbox. Thus,there are virtually no commercial process servers in Germany. How to serve foreign court orders or judgments in Germany and still fulfil the legal requirements of UK or US courts is explained here.