Serving a Tenant

Most simply, tenants can be served personally at the rented premises. They can also be served at the rented premises by registered or certified mail.

If you are dealing with a corporate or co-operative tenant you can serve notice in the way that is required in your governing statute, e.g. the Companies Act, Co-operatives Act or Business Corporations Act:

• For organizations incorporated under the Co-operatives Act, notice can be served or sent to the registered office.
• For organizations incorporated under the Alberta Companies Act, notice can be served or sent to the registered office or served on any director, manager or other officer of the company.
• For organizations incorporated under the Alberta Business Corporations Act, notice can be served or sent to the registered office or sent to the designated post office box for mail.

If you have trouble serving notice on a tenant because he is absent from the premises or because he is avoiding being served, the Residential Tenancies Act provides three ways in which service can still be carried out. You can:

1. give the notice to any adult who lives with the tenant;
2. post the notice in a conspicuous place on the premises; or
3. send the notice electronically, where it will result in a printed copy being received at the residential premises, and where other service methods have been tried and service cannot be carried out.

If you carry out service in one of the above ways, the law presumes that the notice has been brought to the tenant's attention. In order to prove that service was carried out in this way, you might have to swear an Affidavit of Service. An Affidavit of Service is a statement sworn under oath stating when and how the notice was served. Any court action that is based upon a tenant not complying with a notice served, you will require an Affidavit of Service to be produced.

If a tenant does not see the notice when it is posted at the premises or given to another adult, you do not have to serve it again. However, if you subsequently apply to court for an order for possession of the premises, based upon a notice that was served by posting it at the premises or by handing it to someone other than the tenant, the court may extend the time for him to give up possession on the basis that he didn't see the notice.

If a corporation is named in the lease as the tenant, the people living in the rental unit are going to be the effective tenants and will need to receive notice. However, under the Residential Tenancies Act, the rules for serving a corporation as the tenant are the same as for serving a corporation as the landlord. You should therefore also serve the corporation.

February 2006