A relative forwards a photograph of court papers with your name on them, and you are eight thousand kilometres away. The instinct is to wait and see whether it is serious. It is the wrong instinct, because a Sri Lankan case can finish without you.
What most articles on this still say is that you then have fourteen days. That was the law until 2 August 2024. It is not the law now, and the difference matters most to exactly the people this page is for.
The case can finish without you
Section 84 of the Civil Procedure Code is one sentence and it is worth reading slowly. If the defendant fails to file an answer by the day fixed, or having filed one fails to appear, then provided the court is satisfied that the defendant was duly served with summons or had due notice of the day fixed, and provided the plaintiff appears, the court proceeds to hear the case ex parte.
Two things follow from the wording. The ex parte trial is conditioned on the court being satisfied about service, which for someone living overseas is the whole case. And judgment is not automatic: under section 85(1) the plaintiff still has to place evidence before the court and the court has to be satisfied that he is entitled to the relief claimed.
A note on citation, because the error is everywhere. Section 84 has no subsections. The provision about several defendants where some answer and some do not is section 85(3), and the provision requiring the decree to be served on the defendant is section 85(4). Published material citing a section 84(3) or 84(4) is citing something that does not exist.
The fourteen days, and why they may not be running
Section 85(4) requires the court to cause a copy of the default decree to be served on the defendant in the manner prescribed for summons, and the copy carries an endorsement saying that any application to set it aside under section 86(2) must be made within fourteen days of that service.
Section 13 of the Civil Procedure Code (Amendment) Act No. 43 of 2024 repealed section 86(2) and put a new one in its place. The substituted subsection gives three separate moments at which an application may be made.
- At any time after the case is fixed for ex-parte trial against the defendant for default.
- At any time after the decree is entered against him for default but without the service of the decree on him.
- Within fourteen days of the service of the decree entered against him for default.
Read the second of those again. Where a decree has been entered but not served on you, there is no fourteen-day cut-off, because the clock the endorsement refers to has not started. For an expatriate defendant, that is very often the actual position.
The grounds changed too, and they are alternatives rather than a single test. The defendant must satisfy the court, with notice to the plaintiff, either that he did not receive the summons or that he had reasonable grounds for such default. Where he does, the court shall set aside the order fixing the case for ex parte trial, the judgment and the decree as the case may be, and permit him to proceed with his defence from the stage of default on such terms as to costs as the court thinks fit. The word is shall.
One oddity to know about. Section 85(4) was not amended to match, so every default decree still bears an endorsement reciting only the fourteen days. The endorsement now understates what the section allows. Do not treat it as a statement of your rights.
Two older provisions survive alongside. Section 86(2A) lets the court, at any time before judgment is entered, set aside an order made on the defendant's default, but only if the plaintiff consents. And section 86(3) requires every application under the section to be made by petition supported by affidavit.
What the courts had already decided
The 2024 amendment did not come from nowhere. The courts had been reading the fourteen days as something other than an absolute gate for years, and the amendment largely wrote that reading into the section.
In Coomaraswamy v Mariamma [2001] 3 Sri LR 312, Weerasuriya J held at 315 that the requirement to apply within fourteen days of service of the decree does not preclude a defendant from applying before service of the decree, nor the court from inquiring into that application after the decree is served.
The fuller modern statement is Sri Lanka Savings Bank Ltd v Globe Investments (Pvt) Ltd, SC/CHC/Appeal/81/2014, decided on 28 February 2024. It is the case an overseas defendant should know about, because the facts are the familiar ones. A guarantor said he had not been living at the Colombo address where summons and decree were reported to have been served, and that he had been abroad. He gave evidence, produced two passports, and called an officer from the Department of Immigration and Emigration to corroborate the dates. The High Court dismissed his application. The Supreme Court vacated the decree.
Three things in that judgment are worth carrying away. On the standard: whether what is elicited amounts to reasonable grounds is a question of fact and not of law, decided on the facts of each case, and the test is subjective rather than objective, the court viewing the issue with flexibility rather than rigidity. On the fourteen days: where the defendant admits service of neither the summons nor the decree, the Court held the fourteen-day period inapplicable, and the defendant may invoke the court's inherent jurisdiction under section 839 once he becomes aware of the decree, even well outside fourteen days. And on the evidence, the case is more instructive than a simple lesson about documents. The passports did not prove he was abroad on the summons date, and the Immigration officer could not assist because computer records for that period did not exist. What the Supreme Court held was that the failure to prove absence did not itself prove that summons had been served, that the High Court had not considered whether the process server was a trustworthy witness, and that it had imposed a higher burden of proof than the law requires.
The section 839 route has a longer pedigree. In Ittepana v Hemawathie [1981] 1 Sri LR 476 the Supreme Court held that where proceedings are void, the person affected may apply to have them set aside ex debito justitiae in the exercise of the court's inherent jurisdiction.
The counterweight sits in the Code and the Evidence Ordinance rather than in any single case, and it is the reason these applications turn on documents. Section 61, as substituted in 2024, provides that proof of service, including an affidavit of service where the summons was served in any other manner, is sufficient evidence of the service and of its date, and that the statements in it are deemed correct unless and until the contrary is proved. Under illustration (d) to section 114 of the Evidence Ordinance the court may also presume that official acts were done regularly, and by section 102 the burden of displacing that lies on the defendant, who begins the inquiry. A line of cases recognises the onus, including Chandrasena v Malkanthi [2005] 3 Sri LR 286. Which is why passports and immigration records decide these applications and indignation does not.
How the papers reach you, and what changed
The same 2024 Act rewrote most of the service chapter. Sections 59, 60, 61, 66 and 68 were repealed and replaced and section 70 was amended.
The new section 59 allows service by process server, registered post or courier, and by email where the plaintiff wishes and lodges the necessary documents with the court in electronic form. Note what section 61(b) then requires for email: proof of sending, not proof of delivery.
The provision that matters most to someone living abroad is the new section 60(2). Before a court may direct that summons be affixed at the defendant's house, it must have an affidavit from the plaintiff stating that to the best of his knowledge the defendant resides at that address and is not living outside Sri Lanka. A plaintiff who knows you are in Melbourne cannot truthfully swear it. The newspaper route in the new section 60(4) is closed for the opposite reason: it requires the plaintiff to swear he does not know where you live.
The lawful route where your foreign address is known runs through section 69 and section 70. Section 69 requires leave, applied for by motion supported by evidence showing where the defendant is or may probably be found and the grounds of the application. Section 70 requires the order granting leave to direct the mode of service and to fix a date, not later than six months from the order, by which the defendant must file answer. The 2024 Act added a sentence to section 70: such service can be effected by courier service or by any legal firm authorised by the laws of the country where the defendant resides, and proof of personal service of summons shall be submitted to the court. That last requirement is a higher bar than any domestic mode. The summons itself goes out in Form No. 18.
There is no provision in the Code for service on an adult family member living at your address. Sri Lanka has no equivalent of the Indian rule, and relatives in occupation are not automatically an agent for service.
Land cases are different, and this is the exception to watch
Everything above concerns the general rule. A case about land is not governed by it in the same way.
The new section 66 provides that in an action to obtain relief or compensation for wrong in respect of an immovable property or connected thereto, if service cannot be made on the defendant in person, it may be made on any agent of the defendant in charge of the property, and where no such agent can be found the court may direct that the summons be affixed at some conspicuous part of the property.
Section 66 contains no requirement that the defendant be living in Sri Lanka. Parliament put that condition into section 60(2) in the same Act and did not put it into section 66, which is a deliberate-looking contrast. Whether section 69 nonetheless governs once a plaintiff knows the defendant is abroad, whatever the subject matter, is not settled: no reported appellate decision on the amended section 66 has been found resolving it.
So the safe statement is narrower than people want. A money claim against someone known to be living abroad cannot be served by affixing at the family house. A land action may be a different matter, and anyone with property in Sri Lanka should assume it is until a court says otherwise.
Defending without flying home
You do not have to return, and the instrument you need is probably not the one you have been told to get.
Two mechanisms get confused, and the difference decides how fast you can act. A registered attorney is the lawyer on the record, appointed under section 27 of the Civil Procedure Code by a written appointment on First Schedule Form No. 7, which is filed in court. That is not a power of attorney. Section 2 of the Powers of Attorney Ordinance excludes from the definition any authority given to an attorney-at-law for the purpose of appearing as such, so the registration machinery, the Registrar General, the three-month deadline and the five-year validity period have nothing to do with it.
A recognized agent is the other thing. Under section 25(b) a party who is not resident within the local limits of the court's jurisdiction may act through the holder of a general power of attorney, and that power, or a copy certified by an attorney-at-law or notary, is filed in court. That instrument is a power of attorney, it does carry the execution and registration requirements, and the agent still has to appoint a lawyer.
For a defendant on a deadline the difference is the whole game, and the 2024 Act made it wider. Section 4 of that Act inserted section 27(2A). Where a party resident outside Sri Lanka is unable to meet his registered attorney to sign the appointment, it may be signed before an Attorney-at-Law, a solicitor, a lawyer or a Notary of the country where he resides, or before an officer of a Sri Lankan mission, who certifies his identity. And where there is delay or difficulty in producing the original, a copy in electronic form may be produced in court, subject to the original following within a reasonable time as the court may direct.
In practical terms a defendant in Sydney can sign a proxy in front of an Australian lawyer and have a scan filed in Colombo the same week. The Act also replaced Form No. 7 itself, and the new form carries an identity field and a certification block, so an old form should not be used.
If the decree is an old one
The amendment was certified on 2 August 2024 and contains no commencement clause and no transitional provision, so it operates from that date. Whether the new section 86(2) is available to a defendant whose decree was entered before then is a question nobody should answer by date alone.
Sri Lankan law has a general saving provision for repeals, which preserves proceedings that were pending or incomplete when the repealing law came into operation so that they may be carried on as if there had been no repeal. An ordinary civil action is also capable of continuing past decree into execution, so a decree does not necessarily mean that the proceeding was complete. Which version of section 86(2) governs an older matter therefore depends on the state of the record rather than on the calendar, and it is a question to put to counsel with the file in front of them.
What a decree against you can actually do
Doing nothing does not make it go away. A decree that stands can be executed against land, bank accounts and other assets you hold in Sri Lanka, whether or not you ever set foot in the court. Section 88(1) also means there is no appeal against a default judgment as such; what is appealable is a refusal to set it aside.
The practical risk for the diaspora is the one nobody sees coming. A decree sits unexecuted for years, and then surfaces when a family tries to sell land, when a notary will not attest a deed, or when an inheritance is being distributed.
If it is a money claim, check the clock running the other way
Not every claim is worth defending on its merits, because some of them are already out of time. The Prescription Ordinance No. 22 of 1871 sets short periods for ordinary commercial claims: three years under section 7 for movables, rent, mesne profits, money lent without written security and unwritten contracts, and one year under section 8 for goods sold and delivered and work and labour done.
There is a second filter. Since the Mediation Board (Amendment) Act No. 2 of 2024, disputes of one million rupees or less ordinarily have to go to a Mediation Board before a court can hear them.
The first week, in order
Set out as a sequence rather than as instructions, because which parts apply depends on facts this page cannot know.
- The case number and the court are the starting point, and they are on the papers. Counsel in Colombo can inspect the record and establish what was filed, what the return of service says and whether a decree has been entered or served.
- Whether the decree has been served decides which limb of section 86(2) is in play, and whether any time limit is running at all.
- Passports, immigration records, visas, tenancy and utility records are what these applications turn on. The process server's affidavit is prima facie proof of service, and it takes documents to displace it.
- Where the party cannot meet the attorney to sign, the proxy on Form No. 7 may be signed before a lawyer or notary where they live, and where producing the original is delayed or difficult an electronic copy may be filed pending it.
- Where the claim is a money claim, the prescription period and the mediation threshold are worth checking before anything else is decided.
Running a Sri Lankan matter from overseas is ordinary work, and the mechanics of it are set out in instructing Sri Lankan counsel from abroad.
Everything here reflects the Civil Procedure Code as amended to 2 September 2026. No reported appellate decision construing the substituted section 86(2) has been found, so the older authorities on reasonable grounds remain the guide on that phrase, and nothing yet interprets the words about not receiving the summons.
AW Chambers acts as Sri Lankan local counsel for firms and clients abroad on matters of this kind: research, drafting, appearances and enforcement, instructed from London, Singapore and Australia. How that works, and what a first brief should contain, is set out on the international litigation support page.
