Does anyone know if the fact that I have bought and paid for tickets to Rome during the time I'm scheduled for jury duty is any kind of excuse? Will I really have to forfeit my trip? Will they make me eat $3000? (If I don't go, my kids can't go)

Darn I've always wanted to serve on ajury and now it's during my planned trip!

HI
You should call your local jury duty office, but if you haven't postponed before, paid tickets in hand will work.
You may even be able to postpone at least once, if not more times, just by asking for no reason.

In Massachusetts you can defer once, for this type of reason.

Yes, it is an excuse. You only have to call or send back the summons with the information regarding your trip.
The same thing happened to me last summer, when we already had tickets to a couple of destinations.
Don't worry, once you have gotten a summons, it seems they keep contacting you, eventually, you too will be to be a Juror~

Rules related to jury duty are determined locally -- within my own state, the answer to your question would vary from one county to another. So for an accurate answer, you'd better contact local authorities.

In my county, for instance, you'd have no problem because we're allowed one no-questions-asked deferral, and can even request a specific alternative date.

Return the summons with photo copy of your airline tickets, a brief note and request that schedule you at a future date.

One postponement is rarely a problem, even without an excuse, but in this case you have a specific, so just let them know. It should work out fine.

Thanks everyone - I kind of panicked before reading the fine print and found a number for questions and she very cheerfuly postphoned my duty until june and wished me a good trip. Yay!

Joelle

My daughter had the same problem last year..We were going to Europe,a couple days after we bought the tickets, to her horror, received the dreadful notification of Jury duty..

She called and send the photocopy of her tickets..A couples of months later, she had to go and do her duties..

Since I'm usually traveling all summer -- up to five months at a time, several years in a row I received jury duty summons either in advance of when I left or while I was gone. One of those was for district court, which I thought would be harder to get out of, but I've never even had to SHOW proof of travel, they just took my word for it. But last year when I called to get out of it again because of travel, they pinned me down to a date when I would be back. I said I'd be home and clear the first week of November. Sure enough, about the middle of October I received a summons and did my jury duty this past November.