Alabama Guardianship Notice Requirements: How to Serve Parents

Who Must Receive Notice

Under Alabama Code § 26-2A-75, three categories of people must be notified before a court can enter a guardianship order:

1. All living parents of the child — both mother and father, regardless of whether they have custody, involvement, or contact with the child
2. The child, if they're 14 years old or older and are not the one filing the petition
3. The principal caregiver — whoever had primary care of the child during the 60 days before the petition was filed

Missing any of these parties invalidates the hearing. If the judge discovers that a required party wasn't properly served, the hearing gets continued until service is complete. That delay can add weeks or months to your case.

How to Serve Notice

Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure (Rule 4) govern formal service. You have several options:

County sheriff. The sheriff's office delivers the papers in person. Jefferson County charges an additional $10 for each document submitted to its Sheriff's Department for service; check your county's current schedule. The sheriff files a return of service. Available for anyone located within the county.

Certified mail with return receipt requested. You send the papers by certified mail through the post office, and the recipient signs a green return receipt card. The signed card is your proof of service. This works well for cooperative parties or parents at a known address.

Parental consent and waiver. A parent who is named as a defendant in a proceeding governed by Rule 4 may waive service in a document signed by the parent and filed with the clerk. Rule 4(h) does not require that service waiver to be notarized. A service waiver is separate from any consent or parental appointment document.

Serving an Incarcerated Parent

A parent in prison must still be served. Under Alabama Rule of Civil Procedure 4(c), service on an incarcerated person is made at the correctional facility. You'll need to know which facility the parent is housed in — the Alabama Department of Corrections inmate search can help locate them.

Send the papers by certified mail addressed to the parent at the facility, or coordinate with the sheriff's office in the county where the facility is located. The parent then has 30 days from the date of service to file a written response.

Don't assume incarceration means the parent won't respond. Some incarcerated parents consent to the guardianship, which simplifies your case. Others object, which makes it contested.

When a Parent Can't Be Found

If you've made genuine efforts to locate a parent and they simply cannot be found, you can request service by publication. This requires two things:

A diligent search affidavit. You file a sworn statement describing every effort you made to find the parent — calling last known phone numbers, checking with family members, searching public records, contacting former employers, checking social media, trying the last known address. The judge needs to see that you actually tried, not that you casually looked around.

Court-ordered publication. If the judge is satisfied your search was diligent, they'll order service by publication. Your notice runs once a week for four consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county where the case is filed. Publication costs typically run $60 to $100 or more depending on the newspaper.

After the final publication date, the parent has 30 days to file a written response. If they don't respond, the case proceeds without them.

Response Deadlines

A parent served by sheriff or certified mail has 30 days from the date of service to file a written answer with the court. A parent served by publication has 30 days from the date of the last publication. If the parent doesn't file a written response within the deadline, the case moves forward.

Important: informal communication doesn't count as a legal response. A phone call to the clerk's office, a letter to the judge, or a text message to you is not a legal answer. The parent must file a written response with the court according to the rules.

Keeping Track of Service

With multiple parties to serve — potentially two parents, a previous caregiver, and a teenager — tracking service status gets complicated. Each party needs different service methods, and each has their own response deadline.

Our Alabama Guardianship and Custody Court Process Guide includes a service tracker worksheet that logs each party's name, service method, date served, proof of service filed, and response deadline in one place.

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