A court in Adelaide has resorted to using Facebook to track down a missing defendant in a child support dispute, proving you really cannot hide if you are on Facebook.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported today [4 June] that Federal Magistrate Stewart Brown ordered that Facebook be used to serve legal documents on a father who could not be found.

The father apparently had a brief relationship with a woman who later gave birth, but no father was named on the birth certificate. When the mother sought an assessment of child support her application was rejected for lack of proof of paternity.

Attempting to request that the father undergo a paternity test, the mother's solicitor repeatedly tried to contact the father, however letters sent to him, his parents and his current girlfriend received no reply and a process server was unsuccessful in their attempt to deliver the documents.

As a result, Brown ordered that the documents be served electronically, through a private message on Facebook.

Funnily enough, the father was not so keen on keeping his Facebook profile and removed it straight after he received the documents.

Although this seems to be an unusual step for a court to take, this is not the first time a court has served documents via Facebook.

In 2008 the ACT Supreme Court ordered that a judgment be served to the defendants via Facebook after they failed to appear in court.