Many notaries come to me for advise and assistance with notary and loan signing procedures. On occasion I get folks that have a chip on their shoulder for whatever reason. I know this ’notary signing agent business’ can be perplexing and just plain hard to break into. The main problem is that most folks that come into to this profession are not sufficiently trained in their states notarial procedures. So when notaries reach out with questions it is for some of the most basic notarial acts. Things truthfully, they should just know. This is the Secretary of States job which most have failed miserably. Many states don’t have any examples of where to place their stamp or even how to fill out an acknowledgment or jurat but many do and its worth it to look into their handbooks to check.

On this particular occasion, a notary texted me a copy of a jurat and had no clue as to where to place her seal despite the fact to me at least it was obvious that these was a ton of space to the left of her signature. She asked me if this is where she ws to affix her seal. I wrote back 2 word only; ‘Ummm, yes’. I mean where else would you put it. It was the most basic part of her job that she should know. She wrote back quite annoyed that how was she supposed to know this?, blah, blah, blah. Well, how about for starters, getting your notary handbook out and giving it a try, Most folks just focus on loan signing without preparing for what’s really important. THE NOTARIZATIONS!!!

She went on to rant in a text that this is why folks are afraid to ask questions. Well guess what?, you better ask questions. Being a notary can be costly for you and the person you are notarizing signature on documents for. She stated that I sounded annoyed and she was sorry to bother me and that was that. Folks getting an attitude is not helping the situation at all. You had better get all your questions answered and know what you are doing BEFORE you touch anybody’s documents for your sake and theirs. If you don’t ,you will pay the price in more ways than one. And if a little “Ummm”, was enough to set you off then maybe you need to rethink this whole notary signing agent thing.

Why anybody wants to get into this profession without knowing everything about it is beyond me.

As I often do, I read the notary discussion boards. It’s often entertainenlightening and full of situations that we are faced with to deal with almost on a daily basis. Most of them you share personally with me but this was a new one. A few days ago, the topic was about a notary that had a document that had one signature but two notarizations on the same page; One, was an Acknowledgement and the other a Jurat. The notary choose to notarize only one (don’t know which one they choose and they shouldn’t have done this but that is another issue) and the underwriter rejected it and sent it back for completion of the other notarial certificate. It seems that they wanted BOTH the acknowledgement and the jurat completed. The notary said NO and stated that it was one signature per notarial certificate. And since they had only signed once she refused to notarize both. And, although it sounded about right because most of us feel that it is one signature per notarization. After all, that is how we charge clients. In this case the certificates are different. One requires a sworn oath to be given and the other is just an acknowledgment on the part of the signer. I still wondered about this. Where is written in anybodies handbook that states that you can’t do one signature and have two different type of notarial certificates?

In my opinion, It seems that the lender and/or title was covering there rear end. Perhaps they couldn’t choose so they just decided to put both.The problem would have been easy if they had the signer sign one for each certificate. What ever the case its a decision that you have to make. It seems the notaries are split on this. I personally have seen this a couple times and I just notarize both. And enter into my journal.The question is what would you do?