Notary Public Underwriters Blog
Notarial Certificate Tips – How You Sign Matters!
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- Published: July 10, 2023
Notaries, your official signature on a notarial certificate conveys the authority of your office and assures relying parties that the required formalities of notarization have been performed. You must sign every notarial certificate with the same signature (chosen name variation and the signature’s appearance) that you filed with your state’s notary commissioning officer or records custodian.
In most states, a notary provides their official signature upon signing their notary commission application or oath of office. How a notary provides their signature for the official record varies by state, but every state’s official custodian of notary records maintains this important piece of information.
Why this matters: parties relying on a document that includes your notarial act often want official authentication of the notary’s authority to notarize on the date indicated in the signed notarial certificate. (Those of you in the know recognize that this results in an “apostille” or “certification.”)
The document with the signed notarial certificate will be presented to the official notary records custodian in the notary’s commissioning state. This custodian (the Secretary of State, in most states) will verify the notary’s authority to notarize on the date indicated in the notarial certificate; and match the notary’s signature on the notarial certificate against the official signature on file.
If all is in order, the authentication is issued, either an apostille or certification depending on where the document will be used.
Notaries, failing to sign a notarial certificate with the same signature filed in official notary records prevents authentication of your notarial acts, which harms the very parties you intended to help by performing the notarization. Sign every notarial certificate with your “official” signature!