Hi, I’m a fairly new signing agent in Texas. I have only completed 3 signings thus far, but I have had a similar issue during each signing. I can never reach the signing service. What do you do if you can’t reach the signing service by any of the methods provided and there’s something wrong with the loan documents? I had that issue tonight, and I tried for almost an hour to reach them. Eventually I just had to contact the borrowers and cancel. I don’t think this signing service will be contacting me again. Should I have still gone to the signing and explained this to the borrowers face to face?
First of all, thank you for letting us know where you’re located - so helpful!
Depends on what was wrong with the docs - you say you’re new so, respectfully, what makes you think the docs were wrong? A little more detail would help here.
As for nonresponsive SS, in that case I’d contact title company for guidance (and let them know you’re contacting THEM because you can’t reach SS) and call EO/LO listed on 1003 - maybe (s)he can help get you some response or help.
Hope this helps.
Thank you for the response. The issue was with the notarial certificates throughout the first 1/4 of the package. They were split between pages. For some on one page it would have the venue information, “State of Texas, County of _______,” but then the notarial wording and signature line would be on a second page. Then on others it would have the venue and notarial wording on one page with the signature line for the notary on a second page. Others didn’t have lines to write the name of the person who I was notarizing the certificate for. I wasn’t sure how to proceed or know if it was okay to proceed with that information not being all on one page. I am new, so I have never run into that issue before. I did get a call from the loan officer, and they were not happy and called the title company. I also contacted the title company, and got a panicked call from them. They wanted me to select and attach some of my own notarial certificates. However, from what I understand from the training I’m not allowed to select the certificates. It has to be the signer who does that, and the title company did not want that to happen. The signing service finally called me 2 hours after the signing should have begun and also tried to get me to attach notarial certificates. Now I’m not sure if I did the right thing by cancelling considering all signings are time sensitive for the borrowers.
You could have attached your own certs - since there was one on the doc but it was incorrect, you can line through that one, print over it “See attached TX Compliant Cert” and attached your own. If the docs contains an ack, you attach a TX ack; if the doc contains a jurat, you attach a jurat - you’re not deciding what cert to use - you’re simply attaching a state-compliant one.
Sorry to say, but you should not have canceled the signing - you should have either conformed the certs for your state or attached your own cert. You have every right to correct the certs. I hope this didn’t cost borrower a rate lock or anything.
Easy solution to this is print the venue over the cert wording - all fixed. When signature is on a page separate from the cert wording, I’d either attach a good cert (as I said) or draw a line and sign on that line. (I’ve used my DL to do this when I caught it at the table).
As for not being able to reach the signing service, IMO that’s just unacceptable to me that any company would leave a notary hanging out to dry but maybe that’s a good thing because if this is all you found, then the docs were fine. The solution to this problem was with you, not the SS or TC.
If you printed docs out like that then it’s your printer. Maybe you might need to check that out. Or check their docs to see if they sent it to you like that.
I’m in Texas and I have additional acknowledgment and jurat certificates for this problem that you encountered.
According to notary laws in Texas you only let the client chose their own certification if their getting a document notarized themselves such as a school field trip form But when it comes to loan docs that have the certificate that are incomplete and damaged and you know what that cert is you just replace it with a completely new certificate.
Thank you. This is good to know for the future. I wasn’t sure because it was something I’d never run into before.
I thought it was my printer as well, but when I looked at the docs that I received that’s how they were formatted. Thank you for the information. I will remember this for next time.
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