California Probate Summons–Form DE-125

[Music] Hi this Keith Davidson from Albertson and Davidson in this video I'm going to discuss a probate summons this is if the court requires you to serve a summons to a respondent in your probate matter typically when you're filing a petition in probate you don't need to serve a summons but occasionally you do with certain types of filings and this is the form that you'll use if the court tells you that you need a summons so we'll start off by going to the Google website and just putting in Judicial Council forms and that'll bring up our Judicial Council website today we're going to be using form de 125 which is the summons for probate this is the form that you're going to use if you're doing something for example like a probate code section 8 50 action where you're asking that property be returned to a trust or return to an estate and those types of lawsuits require that you personally serve a summons on the defendant or the respondent no those are the same people and once they received the summons then they've been personally served and they know that they need to answer the complaint and/or answer the petition and show up in court and and state their defense so we start off by filling out the name of the person who you're going to serve so in this case let's use the example Bob Smith and then you have to say who it's from so we'll just put in John Doe and then you have to say the estate so let's say this is the estate of herbert davidson so that's the information now if you you have to have a separate summons for each of your respondents so if you have multiple people who you're suing you do multiple versions of this form down here you're gonna put the case number so whatever your case number is you'll put that in there and then you'll have the name and address of the court so if you're in Los Angeles you just put Los Angeles Superior Court I use Los Angeles as an example because it's our largest county in California by population but you also you know whatever court you're in you just put that in there San Diego San Mateo Ventura Orange County whatever it is just type it in there and then you'll put the address of the court and this is so that everybody knows where the action is pending and where they need to file their answer and then you have the name address and telephone number of the filing party's attorney so this is so when somebody answers a complaint or a petition they have to file it in the court but they also have to give notice of that mail notice of that to the plaintiff or petitioner and if the plaintiff or petitioner has an attorney then it go to their attorney so in this case I would just put my own name in here if I'm proper I would just put my name and you can actually just type Roper after it if I'm appearing as a lawyer then I would just put my name and law firm and then I would just put the address where any paperwork should be sent now notice right here this form is going to be signed by the clerk of the court but you have to fill out the form first and then you have to take it to the court and the court clerk will sign it they'll put their stamp on it and they'll also put a seal on it so that you know that it's been issued by the court once the court signs this and puts the seal on it the clerk does that then you're going to have to personally serve it and that's what the proof of service is for and we've gone through a number of proofs of service in our form vault series but this is where you would just fill out who is serving this form now you'll notice here that at the time of service I was at least 18 years of age and not a party to this action it's very important when you personally serve documents that a party to the action cannot be the person who serves this summons you have to hire a service or in some counties you can use the Sheriff's Department but normally you're gonna hire a proof of service company and they're going to serve this for you and then they'll fill out the person who has served when they were served the address where they were served and all of this will be filled out for you and you'll see down here that there's different options that they can use so your your your proof of service company will either hopefully personally deliver it or there's different ways to do what we call substituted service if you can't find the person sometimes you can leave it at their business or home depending on what rules you're operating under you can also have mail service sometimes when you do substituted service you have to both leave a copy and mail a copy so you want to make sure that your proof of service company fills out all the appropriate forms here you also want to make sure that you felt number four which is the notice to the person served as an individual defendant as a person sued under a fictitious name on behalf of so you want to make sure that you fill out the right information here as to the person you served if you're just serving an individual then you can just click that box and then the person who served this is going to have to put their information so if you hire a proof of service company they'll fill that out for you and put their name and information they'll also list any fees for service and they'll have to declare under penalty of perjury that the service was actually done properly you'll notice that number seven I'm a California Sheriff for marshal that will be the box that'll be checked if you hire the Sheriff's Department to do your proof of service and then you'll just date it and you'll sign this form. 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