§ 8.01-513.Service upon corporation, limited liability company, limited partnership, or financial institution.

Corporations, LLCs, limited partnerships, and financial institutions do not answer their own mail the way an individual does, so garnishment law gives creditors a designated target to serve: the “garnishment designee,” a specific person and physical address the entity has filed with the State Corporation Commission for exactly this purpose.

That designation is not casual — it names the person, gives a physical Virginia street address for service during business hours, and must be notarized. An entity can even authorize additional people at that same address to accept service, but if someone other than the named designee accepts, a copy of the notarized designation must go with the return of service.

Sometimes there is no clean designee to serve: the entity never filed one, the designee cannot be found at the listed address, or the designee turns out to be the debtor itself. For those situations, the creditor can certify due diligence and fall back to standard entity-service methods under §§ 8.01-299, 8.01-301, or 8.01-304, or serve a “managing employee,” someone who runs, or reasonably appears to run, the location where service is sought.

Financial institutions get one more layer of protection before a creditor can serve their registered or statutory agent instead: the creditor must further certify that no managing employee could be found in the Commonwealth, that the managing employee is also the debtor, or that the institution has, in effect, requested or authorized that kind of service.