How to Fill Out and Submit an Address Request Form

To get someone’s forwarding address or P.O. Box holder identity from the Postal Service for serving legal process, you submit a USPS address request form — officially titled “Request for Change of Address or Boxholder Information Needed for Service of Legal Process” — to the Postmaster at the post office that serves the subject’s last known address. The whole process runs on a single federal regulation, 39 CFR 265.14, and the Postmaster will send the form back if any required field is blank.¹

Who Can Use This Form

The Postal Service only releases this information to a limited set of requesters. For civil litigation purposes, that means process servers empowered by law to serve process, attorneys representing a party on whose behalf service will be made, and pro se litigants in actual or prospective litigation. A corporation acting pro se also qualifies but must cite the statute that empowers it to serve process.¹

If you don’t fit one of those categories, stop here. Skip tracing outside a lawsuit, debt collection that isn’t tied to litigation, and personal reasons for finding someone do not qualify, and certifying otherwise is a federal offense (more on that below). Government agencies and law enforcement have their own routes under the same regulation and use a different format.

What You Need Before You Start

Decide first whether you want change-of-address information or boxholder information, because the subject details differ:

For a change-of-address lookup, you need the subject’s full name and last known street address.
For a boxholder lookup, you need the P.O. Box address and the subject’s name if you know it.

One subject per form. If you need to locate more than one person, fill out a separate form for each.²

You also need to know which post office serves that last known address, because that is where the request has to go.

Where to Get the Form

USPS publishes the standard format as a PDF on its website, and your local Postmaster can give you a blank copy on request. The Postal Service does not assign this form a numbered designation like most federal paperwork. You can reproduce it on your own letterhead instead of using the PDF, but every element has to appear exactly as written, including the warning statement at the top and the certification language right above the signature. Dropping either one is a defect the Postmaster will flag.¹

How to Fill It Out

The regulation requires six specific pieces of information from process servers, attorneys, and pro se parties. Miss any one and the form comes back.¹

Your capacity. State whether you are a process server, an attorney, or a party representing yourself.
Statutory authority to serve process. Process servers cite their state’s statute. Attorneys and individual pro se litigants are exempt from this field. A corporation acting pro se must cite the statute that empowers it.
Names of all known parties to the litigation.
The court where the case has been or will be filed.
The docket number. If none has been issued yet, check the box provided for that.
The capacity in which the subject will be served — for example, defendant or witness.

Then fill in the subject information: name and last known address for a change-of-address request, or name (if known) and P.O. Box address for a boxholder request.

At the bottom sits the certification: “I certify that the above information is true and that the address information is needed and will be used solely for service of legal process in conjunction with actual or prospective litigation.” Sign it, print your name, and write in your return address. That return address is where the Postmaster mails the answer, and also where the form gets sent back if something is wrong.²

Where to Submit It

Address the completed form to “Postmaster” at the post office serving the subject’s last known address. That is the office with access to the forwarding records and boxholder data for that area, and it is not necessarily your own local branch.³

You can mail it in or drop it off at the retail counter. If you mail it, certified mail or another trackable method gives you proof of delivery, which can matter later if you need to show a court that you exercised diligence trying to locate the subject. The regulation does not set a fee for requests from process servers, attorneys, or pro se litigants.

What to Expect Back

The Postmaster first checks the form for completeness. If any of the six required fields is blank, or the certification or signature is missing, the form is returned with a note on what was wrong. Incomplete forms are not partially processed. That is the single most common cause of delay.¹

Once the form clears review, postal staff search for any forwarding order or boxholder record matching the subject and mail the result to your return address. The regulation sets no deadline for responding, so turnaround varies with the office and its workload. Plan on at least a couple of weeks and follow up with the Postmaster if nothing has arrived in a reasonable time.

Two limits are worth knowing. If the subject has filed a protective court order with the Postmaster, often in domestic violence situations, their address is shielded from release to process servers and attorneys, and only a government agency, a court order, or a law enforcement request through the Postal Inspection Service can reach it. And while you can get a P.O. Box holder’s name and address, the Postal Service will not give process servers or attorneys a copy of the box application itself (PS Form 1093).¹

Penalties for a False Certification

The warning statement at the top of the form is not decoration. Submitting false information to obtain change-of-address or boxholder data, or using the information for anything other than service of legal process, can be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which covers false statements to a federal agency. The penalties are a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment for up to five years, or both.²⁴

Certifying that you need the address for litigation when you actually intend to use it for debt collection outside a case, personal contact, or any other purpose is a false certification to a federal agency. The Postal Inspection Service investigates those cases, and the consequence is not just a denied request.

1
eCFR. 39 CFR 265.14 – Rules Concerning Specific Categories of Records
2
United States Postal Service. Request for Change of Address or Boxholder Information Needed for Service of Legal Process
3
United States Postal Service. Obtain Address Information
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1001 – Statements or Entries Generally