What is a Notary Public?

This article is intended as a general overview of just exactly what a notary public is and what they can and can not do in their official capacity. Please, check your state's laws regarding the exact specifics for notaries in your state.

First of all, notaries are commissioned officer's of the state and or county of their residence and/or their primary job location. They can not perform notarial acts outside of this jurisdiction.

In most state's, they are regulated by the Secretary of State. You can click here to find and link to any state's official web site and here to navigate to all fifty state web pages to locate the office for the record you need a certified copy of.

Please, don't not ask a notary to do something that they are forbidden by law to do. In some states you will be asking them to commit a felony crime. You may also be risking yourself and others a large civil and/or crimminal lawsuit.

Having a document notarized, does not, in most cases, make it official. That is not the duty of the notary. The notary's duty is to verify that the person signing the document is in fact, who they say they are. In a nutshell, they are checking identity.

Notaries perform one of two types of notarizations--acknowledgements and jurats.

A jurat is when the person signing (executing) the document takes an oath that the document is true and accurate to their best of their knowledge, information and belief. To be able to honestly take this oath, the signer must read the document. In many states, taking this oath falsely can subject the signer to that states perjury laws.

An acknowledgement is when the signer of the document acknowledges to the notary that they did indeed sign the document.

In either case the signer must be present at the time of notarization, with a valid form of photo identification. Again, what is accepted as valid photo identification varies from state to state but a few of the acceptable forms are driver's license, passport, Native American Identification Card (only from state or Federally recognized Tribes).

Notaries, in most states, can not notarize copies of any public or vital record such as a copy of a birth certificate, divorce decree, etc. The usual procedure for these types of documents is for the Registrar of the office that is in charge of that particular record, clerk of court, etc. to certify a copy for you. You may click

Many documents need to be notarized, some examples include, but are not limited to: Last Will & Testament, Codicil to a Last Will & Testament, Deed, Mortgage, other loan documents, Powers of Attorney, Petitions to the Court, and many others. Please, check your state's laws as to whether or not your particular document needs to be notarized.

In some, but not all states, notaries can also perform marriages.