About Safe at Home

Safe at Home Address Confidentiality Services are administered by the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State. The main governing laws are Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 5B and Minnesota Rules Chapter 8290.

Safe at Home is designed to help people who fear for their safety maintain a  confidential address. Many times participants are survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

When someone enrolls in Safe at Home, they are assigned a PO Box address that they can use as their legal address. In Minnesota, all public and private entities must accept a participant’s assigned address and a participant cannot be required to disclose their real address. This allows a Safe at Home participant to go about his or her daily life without leaving traces of where they can typically be located, such as their residential address, a school address, or an employment address. This safety measure is an attempt to keep their aggressor from locating them.

Because Safe at Home participants use a PO Box address assigned to them, Safe at Home provides a mail forwarding service. First Class Mail is forwarded to a participant’s home address. The participant’s real address remains under security with the Safe at Home office. In addition to being the participant's agent to receive mail, the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State is a participant's agent to receive service of process (legal papers).