KEEPING YOUR CONTACT INFO UP TO DATE

Did you move recently? At the time you moved, were you involved in any kind of legal proceeding? If so, it’s important for you to update your lawyer, your doctor(s), and maybe even the court system or administrative agency about your new address!

In the modern era when your mobile phone number, your email address, and even your home phone numbers are portable, it’s easy to forget about the need for an old-fashioned address change. After all, your friends, family, job can still reach you anywhere there’s cell phone service. And your emails can follow you everywhere there’s internet service – even the junk emails you’d rather avoid.

However, legal correspondence is a different story. Many administrative agencies and courts will only communicate with you in writing (or “snail mail”). Some legal correspondence must still be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, or requires an original signature on hard copies of documents.

As a result, it’s important to make sure that if you move, your doctors, lawyer, and any court or agencies you have cases with get accurate information about your current physical or mailing address. If they don’t, then you may not receive important documents and miss appointments. That can cause delays in your case or even worse, result in decisions being made without your participation. And it’s rarely good news when the court or agency only hears from the other side before making a decision.

So if you move, don’t forget to include your doctor, lawyer, court, administrative agency, or insurance company when you let people know your new address!