Notary Basics

 A Notary Public is a person who is required to be honest, credible, truthful and with integrity, appointed by the State of California to serve the public as an impartial witness.   A notary must be licensed, boned and insured.  A Notary may perform notarial acts related to the signing of important documents, administering oaths and affirmations, and performing other acts specifically authorized by CA state laws. 

 The silent objective behind most notarial acts is to deter fraud of important legal Important documents and make sure that the signers are entering into agreements knowingly and willingly.  

 Getting a notarized document means that a signature is legitimate — it does not mean anything else. 

 An affidavit is a sworn or affirmed statement made before a notary public or any public official who has the authority to administer oaths. It is made under penalty of perjury.  A notarized affidavit is one in which you swear the content is true before a notary public.  
Although affidavits are considered legal documents, anyone can draft one. As long as it is signed, witnessed, and notarized correctly, it will be valid. That means that you do not have to use a lawyer to create an affidavit.  

 The purpose of an acknowledgment is for a signer, whose identity has been verified, to declare to a Notary that he or she has willingly signed a document. 

An Acknowledgment Certificate will contain the words, “acknowledged before me”.  

 The Primary difference between an Acknowledgment and a Jurat, is that the Jurat must be signed in front of the Notary, not prior.

A Jurat Certificate contains the words, “subscribed and sworn to (or affirmed)    before me.”   

 A Credible Identifying Witness = A Human ID 

A credible witness may be used when a signer does not possess satisfactory evidence or acceptable identification and it would be difficult or impossible to obtain one.

  California notaries are not allowed to certify a copy of anything except a Power of Attorney and their journal records only if requested by the California Secretary of State.   Certified copies of birth, fetal death, death, and marriage records may be made only by the State Registrar, by duly appointed and acting local registrars during their term of office, and by county recorders.  

  In the event a signer is unable to sign their name for any number of reasons, a "signature by mark, can be used in CA.  Two witnesses must observe the signer making the mark.

 The person signing the document by mark has to go through the same identification process as any other signer, to meet the state requirement for satisfactory evidence.    

 PROOF of EXECUTION 

BY SUBSCRIBING WITNESS 

This notarial certificate is used when a principal signer, who cannot appear before the Notary, directs a third party (the subscribing witness) to witness that principal's signing or acknowledging of his or her signature on a document.