Section 1, Module 1
In Progress

Notary Certificate

A Notary Certificate must always accompany all notarizations and the notary must add their official seal to the notary certificate. Since the notary must add their seal to the notarization there will be two seal impressions for each notarization, one for the actual notarization and one more for the notary certificate. The purpose of the notary certificate is to help prevent fraudulent creations of notarized documents and seals by photocopying or switching a notarized page and attaching it to another document or even altering the number of pages within a notarized document. The notary certificate may be preprinted on some documents however you will need to stamp this on most document. There is no size requirement for this stamp, but you must be able to write legibly within the lines.

There are three separate types or the notary certificate and you must remember all three in detail. We will go over the three types in detail below. The first type is for documents that are being filed with the Bureau of Conveyances, the second type is for documents that are not being filed with the Bureau of Conveyances, and the third type is an alternative to the other two and is written directly into the acknowledgement or jurat.

The first type of notary certificate which is mandatory for documents that are recorded at the Bureau of Conveyances but can be used on all documents, even if they are not being filed with the Bureau of Conveyances. This notary certificate must contain the document date, number of pages, printed name of notary, jurisdiction the notarization was performed, a description of the document being notarized, the notary signature, the date of the notarization, and an impression of the notary seal along side the notary certifate. A notary that fails to include this notary certificate may be charged with failure to authenticate and can be charged with a civil or criminal penalties. This notary certificate must be in the format shown below.

NOTARY CERTIFICATE
Document Date: _________________ # Pages_____
(Notary Name): __________Circuit
Document Description: ________________________
___________________________________________
___________________________________________
Notary Signature Date

The second type of notary certificate can be used for any document that is not going to be filed with the Bureau of Conveyances. This notary certificate must contain the printed name of notary, jurisdiction the notarization was performed, the notary signature, the date of the notarization, and an impression of the notary seal along side the notary certificate. This notary certificate must be in the format shown below.

NOTARY CERTIFICATE
(Notary Name): __________Circuit

___________________________________________
Notary Signature Date

The third type of notary certificate can be used in place of the first two notary certificates but must contain the information from the certificate you are replacing and does not require you to include the second impression of your seal that the previous two require. To do this, you would need to have the notary certificate information written into the acknowledgement or jurat itself. For example, if you were to notarize an Affidavit of Occupancy containing 5 pages for John Doe on July 1, 2021 and the date of the document was June 29, 2021 in the Honolulu, Hawaii and the document was not being filed with the Bureau of Conveyances, the notary certificate could read as follows: “This document, dated June 29, 2021 was subscribed and sworn to before me this 1 day of July, 2021 in the First Circuit of the State of Hawaii, by John Doe.” On the other hand, if this was being filed at the Bureau of Conveyances then the statement could read as follows: “This 5 page Affidavit of Occupancy that is dated June 29, 2021 was subscribed and sworn to before me this 1 st day of July, 2021 in the First Circuit of the State of Hawaii by John Doe.”

In the event that the notarial certificate does not fit on the same page as the acknowledgement or jurat st the notary may place the notarial certificate on the back of the page or on the next page of the document. When this practice is exercised the notary must include a written statement indicating the “notarial certificate on back of this page” or “notarial certificate on next page” along with their initials.

HINT: Memorize every field of each notary certificate and where they go.