What is a Notary Public?
What is a Notary Public? What does your service entail? Are you a lawyer, and can you prepare documents for me?
Many customers inquire what a Notary Public, is because many customers call us when it is their first time needing a signature notarized. A Notary Public is a appointed public official who’s duty is to identify the signer of a document, and therefore indicate that the person signing the document has identification matching the name on the document to which they are notarizing. They also ensure that the signer of the document states that they executed the document, execute the document in front of the notary public, or administer the required oath for a Jurat notarization before the signer subscribed his or her signature to the document. A Notary Public can also be utilized just to administer an oath without notarizing the signature of a person. Such as at a deposition, court hearing, or phone court testimony.
A Notary plays a critical role in many types of businesses. These businesses include but are not limited to: mortgages, law, science, real estate, healthcare, etc. Notarization provides more assurance to a lender or company that the person signing the document is indeed who they claim to be: by verifying that they have identification that matches the name they claim on the document.
Notarization helps to reduce fraud when the Notary Public does their job correctly. It requires a person executing a document to have valid identification matching their name on the document, it requires them to state that they signed it, and it requires that the person appear before a Notary Public. This is helpful in the case of someone forging someone elses signatures on documents, because the person who is being notarized must appear, someone else cannot have the document notarized for them. It also helps prevent people from forcing incompetent people to sign. Sometimes people request that a person who is heavily medicated, or just had a major accident in the hospital be notarized, and state that they signed the document, but the signer cannot communicate with the notary or acknowledge signing it, so the Notary would decline and help protect the signer from someone else forcing or forging their signature.