What is your opinion on this Wisconsin directive: DFI-CCS 25.06. Maximum fee for a notarial act for a remotely located individual. A notary public may charge no more than $25 to perform a notarial act for a remotely located individual. Now if I notarize a document showing two individuals on the certificate ie. one certificate for two signatures, I should be able to charge fifty dollars as a maximum fee. The key phrase being “notarial act for a remotely located individual”. This would mean that the charge is per individual and not per certificate
Reading your law as written, then yes I agree $25 for each individual signature notarized. Did you check with your SOS?
It would be helpful to provide a link to the directive.
He cited it…you can look it up
I found it with Google, although I can’t find a URL that leads to it directly. It mentions that it relies on definitions in the law. The law defines a notarial act as
'7) “Notarial act” means an act, whether performed with respect to a tangible or electronic record, that a notarial officer may perform under the law of this state. The term includes taking an acknowledgment, administering an oath or affirmation, taking a verification on oath or affirmation, witnessing or attesting a signature, certifying or attesting a copy, and noting a protest of a negotiable instrument…
So I agree with jnewberry and Linda. When taking an acknowledgement, you have to ask each signer if they signed for the purposes in the document. For an oath, you have to ask each signer if they swear or affirm. So each person and each document is a separate notarial act. If there were two signers and each one signed two documents, that would be $100. Whether there were two certificates or four wouldn’t matter to Wisconsin (but it might matter to the platform provider).
An interesting question is it says “A NOTARY PUBLIC may charge no more than $25…” But often it isn’t the notary who charges, it’s the platform. What if there was one notarial act, and the platform charged $50 and gave $25 to the notary. Would that be OK?
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