If you have certain disabilities, but you want to serve the court must make every effort to accommodate you to allow your participation. If the court is unable to provide an accommodation that would allow you to fully participate you would be entitled to be excused from your service.

You may notify the court providing the exact dates of your planned vacation. The court will make every effort to accommodate your vacation plans by modifying your dates of jury service, but until you are notified in writing by the court that your service dates have changed, you must plan to serve as directed.

You have been randomly selected to serve based on information provided to the court from the secretary of state’s office. Please fill out your juror questionnaire online and plan to make accommodations to be available to report for service if needed. You will NOT report every day, and you do not need to miss work for 2 weeks. Instead, you will call the juror hotline each night to see if you are selected to report the following morning. The week prior to service, the court will reach out via email to alert you of potential trial dates. It is recommended you provide a valid email address and text-capable phone number when answering your questionnaire so you may receive the most up to date information from the court.

If selected to report, the jury selection process is usually concluded prior to the lunch hour and if selected to be a seated juror, trials usually last 2-3 days.

You may submit an excusal request online once your online questionnaire has been completed. Please note ALL excusal requests require some form of documentation to be submitted to the court via email or fax. This contact information is located on your summons. Please note the only statutory reasons for which a person is excused from service are:

1. Not a resident of Allegan County (proof of new address is needed)
2. Convicted of a felony (year and county/state needed)
3. Full time attendance in school (class schedule for full time enrollment required)
4. If a person is over 70 years of age.

Other reasons such as a conflict with work, lack of childcare, lack of transportation or personal prejudices or biases are not reasons for which a person is excused from jury service.

You are not required to serve more than once per calendar year. The jury selection process is a random process based upon all Allegan County residents holding a valid Michigan driver’s license or Michigan Identification card.

If you have not been excused by the court, you must report as directed for your jury service. When you go through the selection process you will be given an opportunity by the court and the attorneys in the case to state any reason you believe would prevent you from being able to fulfill your duties as a juror or anything that would pose a severe hardship on you if you were selected to serve as a juror. Failure to report for jury service when directed to do so may result in the Court ordering you to appear before the judge to show cause why you should not be held in contempt.