Legal
What evidence supports "reasonable enquiry" before service, enforcement or write-off
Courts and creditors ask the same question in different words: what did you actually do to find this person? Here is the evidence that answers it.
By Mike Gillam, Managing Director
Published · Reviewed
"Reasonable enquiry" is one of those phrases that appears everywhere in practice and is rarely defined precisely in one place. A court hearing an application for substituted service wants to see it. A credit committee approving a write-off wants to see it. A regulator reviewing a decision not to pursue a matter wants to see it. In every case the underlying question is the same: what did you actually do before you relied on an absence, whether that is an absence of a known address, an absence of a response, or an absence of recoverable assets?
Why the standard is about effort, not outcome
A failed trace is not, on its own, evidence of anything. What matters is whether the effort that produced the failure was genuine and proportionate to the matter. A single letter sent to an old address, unopened and unanswered, does not demonstrate reasonable enquiry. A documented sequence of searches across the sources that would ordinarily locate a person or establish a fact, run in a sensible order and recorded as they were run, does.
Contexts where reasonable enquiry is tested
Substituted service
Where ordinary service cannot be effected, an application for an alternative method of service typically needs to show what was tried first. That means the addresses checked, the sources searched to find a current one, the dates of each attempt, and why they did not succeed. Our note on how to verify an address before service sets out the verification method that produces this record as a by-product of doing the search properly.
Debt write-off decisions
Before a debt is written off as unrecoverable, a credit committee generally wants evidence that the debtor's position was actually checked, not assumed. That means a location result, an asset and encumbrance picture, and any insolvency event, recorded together with the date each was checked. See how to assess a debtor's asset position for the sequence that answers this efficiently.
Estate and beneficiary matters
Executors and trustees who cannot locate a beneficiary are expected to show genuine steps were taken before distributing on the basis that the beneficiary cannot be found. The same documentation principle applies: what was searched, when, and with what result.
Regulatory and internal investigations
Where a decision not to escalate or pursue a matter turns on an inability to reach a witness, complainant or subject, the same standard of documented effort supports the decision if it is later reviewed.
What the evidence should contain
- The starting information and its age or source.
- Each record source queried, and the date it was queried.
- What each source returned, including a negative result.
- The reasoning that connects the results to the conclusion reached.
- Who carried out the enquiry and under what authorised purpose.
A negative result is evidence too, provided it is recorded. "No current directorship found" and "no PPSR registrations found" are useful findings, not gaps in the file, as long as the search that produced them is documented.
Proportionality still applies
Reasonable enquiry does not mean exhaustive enquiry. The depth of the search should match the significance of the matter and the collection must remain necessary and not unreasonably intrusive under the Privacy Act 2020. Searching every available source on a small, undisputed balance is disproportionate; recording that a narrower, sensible search was run and why is itself part of a defensible file. The Act is available on legislation.govt.nz.
Building the record as you go
The practical failure is not a lack of searching, it is a lack of contemporaneous record. Recreating a search history from memory months later, after a matter is challenged, is unreliable and often incomplete. intelID timestamps every search, the sources queried, the results returned and the declared authorised purpose automatically, producing the enquiry record as a by-product of doing the work rather than as a separate task. See how search audit logs work, the workflow for law firms and process servers, our compliance page, or request access.
This article is general information, not legal advice on a particular matter.