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Addresses

What addresses are for​

Address information serves two unrelated purposes on most legal forms:

  • Providing a place to send official court notices and receive service of process
  • Determining eligibility and venue

Determine which purpose is served by the address question on your form. In particular, if you have both purposes, be aware that your users may have different domiciles and mailing addresses.

Ask for addresses in parts​

Most PDF forms ask for an address in multiple labeled parts. Addresses are also often used to determine eligibility, which requires separating zip code or city name from the rest of the address. There is no 100% reliable programmatic way to break a single-line address field into parts, so best practice is to ask for the address in parts in your interview.

id: person's address
sets:
  - person.address.address
  - person.address.city
question: |
  Person's Address
fields:
  - code: |
      person.address_fields()

Allow user to specify country if appropriate​

If your users commonly may provide addresses from a different country, show a country dropdown. Store the country with the ISO country code.

Ideally, update fields to match at least the most common countries, by updating labels like Zip code to Postal code and replacing State with the appropriate label for that country.

id: person's address
sets:
  - person.address.address
  - person.address.city
question: |
  Person's Address
fields:
  - code: |
      person.address_fields(show_country=True, country_code="US")

Allow the user to provide a separate mailing address​

If both residence and mailing address are important, make sure to ask for both, and ask a clear question that prompts the user for the correct information.

It is appropriate to offer the user's home address as a default for their mailing address.

ALIndividual objects in the Assembly Line framework have a predefined mailing_address attribute.

id: person's address
sets:
  - person.address.address
  - person.address.city
question: |
  Person's Address
fields:
  - My mailing address is: person.mailing_address
    datatype: object_radio
    choices:
      - person.address
    object labeler: |
      lambda y: y.on_one_line()      
    none of the above: |
      Somewhere else
    disable others: True  
  - code: |
      person.mailing_address.address_fields()

Getting the address of someone who is experiencing homelessness​

Some users may be un-homed. Getting the address of a user who does not have a traditional home can be tricky. Consider fallback solutions that gracefully handle situations where an individual:

  • lacks a permanent address
  • is "couch surfing" or staying with a friend
  • living in a homeless shelter
  • is sleeping outside
  • is otherwise experiencing homelessness

Note that many unhoused people do have a place that they receive mail. It might be:

  • a friend or family member
  • a local homeless shelter
  • a PO Box or non-traditional box (such as at Mailboxes, Etc.)
  • general delivery at the local post office

For people with these common solutions, the traditional address question above may be sufficient.

Determine the purpose of collecting the address​

When designing your address question, it is important to know whether the address is being collected to provide a place to send official correspondence or to determine eligibility or venue.

For eligibility and venue, knowing the city and state is usually enough. People without a traditional home still stay in a city and state. Note: someone who is unhoused may be more likely to use a mailing address that is not in the same venue as their physical location.

There may be special circumstances where more information is required for determining venue or eligibility. For example, Dana Chisnell of the United States Digital Service Agency reports that they allow people without a traditional address to mark a map indicating the intersection where they can normally be found.

If the address is being used for official correspondence, decide how to handle the fact that some users just will not have a traditional address to receive correspondence.

Ask for a city, state, and a written explanation​

id: person's address
sets:
  - person.address.address
  - person.address.city
question: |
  Person's Address
fields:
  - code: |
      person.address_fields(allow_no_address=True)

Use person.address.has_no_address as a trigger, not person.address.address​

If you need to accommodate users without a traditional address, use the variable person.address.has_no_address as a trigger in your interview order block, instead of person.address.address.

Come up with a strategy for placing the alternative address on the form​

Most forms have two lines for an address--a line for apartment, street number and street name, and a separate line for the city, state, and zip code.

If you use the 3-part input described above, you can put the explanation on line 1 and fill in the city and state as normal, leaving the zip code blank.

Make sure the user knows the character limit for this line on the form. Consider providing an addendum.

If you use the Assembly Line framework, the following methods are all "aware" of the variation on an address that handle un-homed individuals, and you do not need any special logic in the template file or attachment block:

  • address.block()
  • address_block()
  • address.on_one_line()
  • address.line_one()
  • address.line_two()

Handling international addresses​

Court forms usually require that one or both litigants in the action reside in the United States, but they may require you to provide the address of a non-party to the case. That person may not live in the same country as the jurisdiction of the form.

International addresses are complicated. Divisions like "state" may have a different name and may not be commonly used to address mail in some countries. The order of fields like postal code and apartment number may be totally different.

Ideally, your address fields should accommodate the order and presence of fields for at least the most common countries that your users will provide addresses from.

The most common field that will cause trouble is the drop-down menu for "state". You may want to replace this with a free-text field and make it optional when an international address might be provided in your interview.

Consider a fall back of a completely open text field​

The most flexible input of all for an address is a wide-open text field. This may be appropriate to show as an alternative, even if your user is able to select the country, to handle countries with address formats that you may not know in advance.

Keep in mind that this may not be a very good user experience for most users. Your default address question should be more standardized.

Further reading​

Collecting international addresses​

Collecting address of an unhoused person​