Kern County is big, spread out and split by mountains, which shapes how papers get served there. We handle process serving, court filings and document retrieval across the whole county: Bakersfield, the farm towns of the north valley, the West Side, the Tehachapi Mountains and the desert east of them.
Send the job on a Service Request with the documents attached, or email PDFs to Service@ValproAttorneyServices.com. Kern County assignments are coordinated from Sacramento and handled in the field by servers and runners we work with across the state. Questions go to 855-582-5776.
A court that divides its work by geography
Kern County Superior Court assigns cases by location. The nearest courthouse that handles your type of matter is often the right one, and small claims venue is set by ZIP Code, so check the court's lookup before you file.
In Bakersfield, the work splits across two buildings on Truxtun Avenue. The Metropolitan Division Justice Building at 1215 Truxtun takes civil (limited and unlimited), unlawful detainer, small claims, family law, child support, mental health and restraining orders. The Metropolitan Division at 1415 Truxtun handles criminal matters and appeals. Probate, guardianship and conservatorship cases go to the Juvenile Justice Center at 2100 College Ave, and traffic has its own building on Arrow Street.
Outside Bakersfield, the Delano, Lamont, Mojave, Ridgecrest and Shafter branches each take limited civil, small claims, unlawful detainer, family, criminal and traffic cases, so an eviction in the desert doesn't have to travel to Bakersfield. The court no longer lists branches in Taft or Lake Isabella. The free Small Claims Advisor is at the Justice Building, (661) 610-6518.
Hours matter here. Clerk hours are 8 a.m.–4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m.–12 p.m. on Friday at the Bakersfield courthouses and the branches. A Friday afternoon deadline in Kern County is effectively a Friday morning deadline at the counter. Source: the court's locations page and division pages, checked Oct 28, 2026.
E-filing status
Kern requires attorneys to e-file. Local Rule 1.10 (rev. July 1, 2026) makes e-filing mandatory for represented parties in limited and unlimited civil, family law, probate, parentage, CEQA, civil writ and unlawful detainer cases. After the court's new case management system went live, Standing Order STO-25-0008 has required every filing by a represented party to go through the court's eCourt portal since October 6, 2025. Paper from represented parties is no longer accepted.
There are exceptions. Self-represented litigants may still file on paper, and appeals plus some family and probate documents (adoptions, wills and codicils, bonds) can't be e-filed. Small claims may be e-filed through an approved provider. Source: the court's e-filing page, checked Oct 28, 2026.
Our Court Filings service covers both routes: eFiling for represented parties, or a court runner at the Bakersfield or branch counter for papers that still go in by hand. Include the court, case number and deadline with the documents.
Distance, small towns and timing
Kern grew after 2020: 909,235 residents in the 2020 Census and an estimated 927,068 on July 1, 2025, per the Census Bureau. Close to half live in Bakersfield (403,455). Delano (51,428) and Ridgecrest (27,959) come next, and the places we serve sit between about 229 and 322 miles straight-line from our Sacramento office.
Several communities are very small. The 2020 Census counted 52 people in Fellows, 102 in McKittrick and 108 in Woody. Desert and mountain addresses like these, plus Tehachapi, California City and Frazier Park, fall under our standing rule: remote areas are subject to different timelines.
Help the server find the right door on the first trip:
- the physical location of the property, with a cross road if the address is rural
- the person's employer, especially for farm, field or shift work
- the days and hours they are usually home
- every other address you have, in Bakersfield or elsewhere
- for an address on a military installation, any access arrangements you know of
How Kern County requests run
Start a Service Request and upload up to 5 PDFs, or email them to Service@ValproAttorneyServices.com. Tell us who to serve, list each address, write a Letter of Instruction and choose Rush or Standard. Every update comes by email; reply to your confirmation any time to ask where it stands.
On a weekday between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m., call 855-582-5776 if 5–10 minutes pass without an answer. When a rural address turns out to be wrong, skip tracing can look for a current one before the next trip.
Serving a Bakersfield business or an out-of-state company with Kern County operations usually starts with its agent for service of process. Our serving corporations page shows how to find the agent.