Can I Sign Pennsylvania Banking Document

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I'm really excited to tell you about Pennsylvania's new law and remote online notarization and show you how I got my own will power of attorney and health care directives signed and officially notarized without ever leaving the house coming right up hi this is Andy Sykes with Sykes elder law talking to you today about act 15 Pennsylvania's new law which is temporary it only applies during the current kovat 19 emergency and then for 60 days after but during that time it allows people to sign important documents and get them notarized without being in the physical presence of a notary it's something called remote online notarization and in this video I'm gonna explain how it works and tell you how I got my own estate planning documents electronically signed and officially notarized right from home and you'll even see some of that online sessions so you can get a feel for how that goes first a little background some documents require a signature that's been notarized for example here's my power of attorney it allows someone else to manage my affairs pay my bills authorize medical help all kinds of vital things if I can't do those things myself because maybe I've been in an accident or developed a dementia or for whatever reason now under Pennsylvania law this document won't be valid unless I have it signed in front of two witnesses and a notary public and the notary public validates that I really am who I say I am and then I actually signed this power of attorney so up until now the law has required me to be in the physical presence of those witnesses and the notary in order for my signature to be notarized now obviously physical presence is a problem in this current pandemic because of the stay at home orders or because people are just not comfortable being exposed to others and as an elder law attorney my clients are sometimes in a hospital or nursing home and no one is allowed in so it can be even impossible to get those vital documents signed if you can't be in someone else's physical presence so Pennsylvania has a new law and it's called act 15 that went into effect on April 20th 2020 and under that law there are a number of requirements that must be met before a remote online notarization is valid for example the notary has to file an application and be approved by the Pennsylvania Department of State you can find the steps to becoming approved and a link to the application on the Department of State website the notary also has to use approved technology to confirm the identity of the signer and then to have the signing itself so products that you may have heard of like zoom Skype FaceTime those are not acceptable you can't just be a notary you know get on skype with somebody watch them sign the documents and and notarize it and have that be acceptable because you have to use the approved technology for that so instead the Department of State has a list on its website of approved vendors and you want to make sure that the vendor is approved for remote online notarization and on the psychs elder law website I have a blog post that spells out more of the technical details about how remote online notarization works and has links to act 15 and to the Department of State website pages in order to be a signer like I was you need to have an email and a computer that has a microphone and a camera so many laptops have microphones and cameras built-in or you can buy a webcam and add it to your desktop computer alright so how I got my documents signed and notarized was that I worked with a notary who was already approved by the Department of State to do the remote online notarization and she was signed up with one of those approved vendors on that list now I'm an attorney so I prepared my own estate planning documents and I emailed them to the Notary then she prepped the documents further so that I could sign them electronically now the notary has to verify that I really am who I say I am so that technology approved by the Department of State has a way for me to verify my identity so on the day of the signing I received an email from the notary with a link to do that identity verification so I answer some questions online and and there were the type of questions that only I would know the answer to things like having to do with where I might have lived and people it might be related to that sort of thing so once I verified my identity I joined the online session where I could see the notary and the witnesses and they could all see each other and here's what that looked like Tuesday May 12th 2020 to electronically sign the healthcare directive power of attorney and last well for andrew sites is everybody here of their own free well yes yes yes okay great we'll start with Andy Andy would you look directly into the camera state your attorney your full name your residential address and then hold up your ID front and back you know and then at that point in the session I gave my address I held up my driver's license and the technology verifies biometrically that my face is actually the same as the face on my driver's license and the witnesses did the same thing so then later on I gave my approval that my documents get signed with my electronic signature and she'd be done and then I will documents to you my documents are ID by email and I'll show you on the screen that this is what my signature looked like and the witnesses signatures and the notarization looked like this and indicated that it was made by the use of communication technology which is something that's required by the new law again the new law is temporary during the Cova 19 emergency and for 60 days afterwards but there is some legislation pending in Pennsylvania that could make it permanent but for now this is how we can have people sign legally valid estate planning documents without leaving their house or the hospital nursing home or wherever they might be if you have any thoughts or questions on this leave a comment below and we'll try to answer as many of those as we can if you found this information valuable click the like button and then that helps others to find this video we have more content coming out soon so if you subscribe and hit the bell you'll get notified when that comes out thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video