Digital service (digital forkyndelse)

Also known as digital post, e-boks, service via digital post, electronic service

Digital service is service through Digital Post — today the main rule, and it is effected once the message has been made available to the recipient.

Key facts
Effected via
Digital Post
Counts as served
Once the message is available
Exception
Exempt recipients

In practice

The decisive point is that service has taken place once the message is available in the recipient’s Digital Post. Not once it has been read. A debtor who leaves the message unopened has been served in exactly the same way as one who opens it straight away.

That is what makes judgment in default possible. The case can proceed without the debtor’s participation, because the law has already settled when he is to be treated as having received the message.

The exception is those exempt from Digital Post. Here service has to go another way — by post or through a process server — and that is the route that costs time and money. A debtor who is hard to reach physically can make an otherwise simple case noticeably more expensive.

Where it commonly goes wrong

  • Waiting for a read receipt. Service does not depend on anyone opening the message.
  • Assuming everyone can be served digitally. Exemption is not rare, and if it is discovered late, weeks have gone.
  • 30 days free
  • No payment card
  • One day's notice