Cross out and initial

What if you are in the notary business and you just made a mistake, or someone else made a mistake in a document. Simple, just cross out and initial, right? Maybe not. Putting aside the questionability of the legitimacy of a document with cross-outs, the future document custodian might not like cross-outs.

Picture yourself as a lender. You are having a loan signed, so you can sell the loan to yet another bank. That other bank doesn’t like it when people cross out and initial information on their loan documents. It looks sloppy and unprofessional to them. So, as a notary, what do you do when there is a problem with a document? You ask your contact person what they want to do.

They can either redraw the document at great expense, coerce the borrower to sign the document “as is”, or have you cross out and initial. Let your contact person make the decision so they get in trouble — not you!

Redrawing documents means that you will have to wait for the new documents to be typed up, sent via email or FedEx, and then you need to make a new appointment with the borrower on a subsequent date.

You might also like:

The 30 point course section on cross-outs
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=14406

Signing agent best practices: 63 points
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=4315

Cross-out happy; Not a good idea
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=4449

Industry standards in the notary business (covers cross outs, initialing, and more)
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=4370