One notary stamp = one notarial act? Lets take the example of administering an oath that requires a signature. Two people take the same oath. First they sign the paper they will swear is true. Then the notary asks “do you swear you are familiar with the contents of this document and it is true and correct, so help you God?”
The first person says “I do”. That’s one notarial act. The second person says “I do”. That’s another notarial act. The notary writes both names in the notarial certificate, signs it once, fills out the other blanks, and applies one official stamp. One official stamp, two notarial acts.
Looking at the fee schedule in page 3 of the draft rules I posted earlier, it says
Executing affidavits (no matter how many signatures) $5
Administering oaths (per individual taking an oath) $5
Executing verifications $5
I’m not sure what to make of that, since affidavits and verifications involve administering oaths. Also, notaries don’t execute affidavits, the people swearing do.
If you look on page 7, it’s different. Affidavits aren’t mentioned, and it’s $5 per person making declaration when taking verification on oath or affirmation.
Notary Act allows you to add multiple signers to one entry. Each signer presents their own ID and each ID is entered for each signer. So if 4 people are signing the same document, that’s one journal entry with 4 names and 4 IDs entered for that single entry.
So the only question remaining is what would you do for multiple documents? Would you scan the signer’s ID once as one journal entry and then notarize their multiple docs under that one journal entry?
In Texas we can created our own notary journal as long as we capture the 9-elements required by law. Our homegrown journal can be paper or electronic. I was working on an electronic journal using Excel. Texas journals are the notaries record. The signers aren’t required to sign the journal.
Check with the manufacturers of the e-Journals. My favorite is Jurat Inc, their notary e-Journal is very user friendly. You can email support and ask any questions you might have about the journal & how to handle the storage requirements when you are no longer a notary. To collect the ID information for the client, you can scan the front of the ID & then the back, the system compares the 2 (biometrics) to ensure that it is a valid ID -OR- you can just manually input it.
In MT we are not allowed to record the ID# so, as of right now we just have to delete it, Jurat says that they are working on making it so that you can just check a box in the settings or something like that & it won’t be recorded at all.
You are not actually taking a picture of the ID to keep in your journal.
RON platforms usually have their own built-in journals Again, check with the company/platform & maintain them as required.
Jurat Inc (eJurat) is compliant with PA notary laws. I’m in California and will never shift back to paper journal. eJurat is saving me hours of time! And it’s easy and my clients are impressed.
