§ 8.01-320.Personal service outside of Virginia.

Section 8.01-320 governs personal service completed outside Virginia's borders. Subsection A allows that service to be made either by someone authorized to serve process in the jurisdiction where the party is located, or by any person 18 or older who is not a party or otherwise interested in the case — and notably, that second category of server does not need separate circuit-court authorization to serve process commencing a divorce or annulment action.

The legal effect of that out-of-state service depends entirely on whether Virginia's long-arm statute reaches the defendant. When the court can exercise jurisdiction over the nonresident under § 8.01-328.1, service under this section has the same effect as personal service on the nonresident within Virginia. When it cannot — or when service instead follows the family-member substituted-service method of § 8.01-296(2)(a) (delivering the process to a family member at the defendant's usual abode) — the service has only the more limited effect of a duly executed order of publication. Depositions may be taken after twenty-one days' notice served personally, and the served person is in default if no responsive pleading is filed within twenty-one days, after which the case may proceed without further service of additional pleadings, including deposition notices.

Subsection B addresses divorce and annulment cases specifically, validating any personal service completed outside Virginia in the manner this section describes, whether it occurred before or after October 1, 1977, and confirming that this section remains the proper way to execute such service going forward.