What are Notaries Public? What does Notary Public services involve? Are Notary Publics licensed lawyers? Can Notaries prepare documents and provide legal advice?
Many people ponder what a Notary Public is when they first encounter a document that requires notarization. Having not ever heard of a Notary Public before, many questions arise.
Simply put, a Notary Public is an appointed public official who’s duties are to identify signers, give oaths and affirmations, and verify whether a person is indeed the person who executed and signed a document. Notaries have many functions, some of which include notarizing, however they can also be utilized to swear in an affiant for a deposition, court proceedings, and telephone court hearings and testimony.
Notaries Public have a critical role in many businesses, proceedings, and laws. Some businesses which frequently require the services of a Notary Public include lenders, lawyers, science, real estate companies, healthcare companies and services, etc.
Notarization can ensure a lender that an individual with matching identification willingly executed the documents to close their mortgage loan, verify that a person has been duly sworn in for testimony, assist in properly identifying inventors for application and execution of a patent, verify the identities of signers purchasing their first home, and ensuring that patients in medical facilities are the ones who executed crucial health care decision documents.
When a Notary Public does their job correctly, and according to the laws of the state they are governed by, they help greatly to reduce fraud and forgery. Notarization requires a person presenting a document for notarization to be identified using proper ID which matches the names of the signer within the document. It requires that the person being notarized be present in front of the Notary Public. This is helpful in the case of reducing signature forgery because the person who’s name is subscribed to the document must personally appear before the Notary Public. Nobody else is permitted to have a document signed by someone else notarized.
Notaries must also be able to fully communicate with the signer who they are notarizing, so if someone is incompetent and cannot communicate or express their desire to have a document notarized, someone else cannot force them to.
Notaries Public play critical roles in many ways that often go unseen, until you require a document to be notarized yourself.