- 1). Send a piece of mail to your second home. According to the United States Postal Service publication 508, mail is delivered as addressed, not according to the name on the mail. You can receive mail at any address you wish. The Postal Service is not a clearing house for the legality of receiving mail at an address. In other words, you don't need permission from the post office to receive mail at your second address. By sending a piece of mail to your second home, you may establish the idea in the local postal delivery worker's mind that you are a resident at that address.
- 2). Maintain residency at your original home. A state can argue that if you spend most of your time at one residence, you have in fact established residency in that state and owe income taxes in that state. Make sure you have the Postal Service deliver non-state items such as federal tax notices, legal papers from out of state and magazines from national publishers to the residence you want to be recognized as your official residence. This will help you establish that the other residence is a second home.
- 3). Use two mail forwarding services. Hire someone to pick up your mail at each home and mail it to the home you are staying in. Do not ask the Postal Service to do this. Doing so may delay delivery and cause confusion. Hire a neighbor or a commercial mail-forwarding service to take care of the matter.
- 4). Have your mail held. If you don't want to go to the trouble of having mail forwarded, you can ask the Postal Service hold your mail while you are at your other residence. This method will not notify the local post office that you have moved, it will only tell them you are going out of town.
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