Search Sign Form Later

Parent Acknowledgement Form Texas 2006-2019

well we finally reached the point where we can talk specifically about how to complete the most frequent notary Act and that is the acknowledgement first of all we want to talk about what an acknowledgement really is what it means and why it's so important before we begin to talk specifically about completing acknowledgments I want to remind you that you must first examine the document for completeness as we've said before a notary may not take an acknowledgement on a document that is blank or incomplete however the notary may ignore those areas that are to be completed a little later on such as information that's going to be placed in the document by a county clerk or a recorder or for additional signers whose signatures aren't being notarized by the notary public at the moment secondly the identity of the signer must be confirmed by using the methods we covered in the previous sections under identification finally be sure to enter all the information into the notary journal as we described in the previous section under journal entries now we're ready to complete the acknowledgement portion an acknowledgement simply means that the document signer has acknowledged to the notary that he or she signed the document and that the notary properly identified that signer will look at the specific wording of an acknowledgement for California but I want to reiterate that the notary wording regardless of the state will include something about the document signer acknowledging that they signed the document and it's through this wording that you'll know that it's the acknowledgement notary Act which is to be completed for example the notary wording appears at the bottom of this grand deed and within the notary wording you can see that the document signer has acknowledged to the notary that he executed the document executing the document simply means that he signed the document when the notary completes an acknowledgement the notary is certifying an under penalty of perjury three important facts about that signing event first the signer personally appeared before the notary public on the date indicated and in the county indicated in the county section noted as the venue portion of the acknowledgement that the identity of the signer was based on satisfactory evidence and that the signer acknowledged signing the document and did so in his or her own authorized capacity now the process for completing an acknowledgement is always the same first examine the document to be sure it's complete and it doesn't have any blank or incomplete spaces that needed to be completed first remember that you'll have to be presented with the entire document in order to ensure this examination second confirm the identity of the signer based on satisfactory evidence use the identification procedures we've already discussed when a signature requires an acknowledgement the signer may have already signed that document before it's even brought to the notary for notarization if the signers already signed the document you'll need to obtain an acknowledgement from that person that they've signed the documents since you didn't physically see him or her sign so how do you do this well you just ask is this your signature or did you sign this document if the document is not yet signed then of course just ask the signer to execute the document at that time so there are two ways for a signer to acknowledge his or her signature to the notary first the notary receives an affirmative response from the signer when they're asked about the signature that's already there or secondly the notary watches the signer sign the document now the other part of this is that when the document signer acknowledges their signature that acknowledgement simultaneously indicates to the notary that they have the authorized capacity or that is the right or the title that is required by the document to sign that document so for example if the documents supposed to be signed by a CEO or by a trustee the person who signed the document represents with their signature that they have the authorized capacity or that they hold that representative title the notary in California is not permitted to verify that title so while a notary in another state may be required to see it's a Articles of Incorporation or something like that to verify that the signer is indeed the CEO for example in California that is not the case and in fact it's illegal for a notary to do so it is the signer who acknowledges their signature and the authorized representative capacity to sign that document and it is not the notaries responsibility or duty to verify that capacity following the signature acknowledgement the notary should complete the notary journal and then complete the wording on the acknowledgement and used a notary seal to complete the notary process this is the California certificate of acknowledgement which is either pre-printed on the document or is added to the document using an acknowledgement stamp for example or a separate acknowledgement sheet the document signer will need to sign the document but the notary must ensure the completion of the acknowledgement portion and of course the notary must sign underneath the section that states I certify under penalty of perjury under the laws of the state of California that the foregoing paragraph is true and correct the certificate of acknowledgement must be completely filled out and must include a notary signature and the notary seal it's always the notaries responsibility to ensure that the acknowledgement is the correct form and that is filled out properly the notary may never place a notary seal or signature on the acknowledgement before that wording is completed I also want to remind you that the acknowledgement assigned under penalty of perjury so never complete an acknowledgement for someone who is not physically present before you at the time of notarization or for someone who cannot present satisfactory identification of course a notary may notarize the signature on any document whether or not that document originates in California but California notary law is very specific when it comes to notary wording remember that when someone brings a document to a notary the document will already have notary wording either pre-printed or attached to the document if the notary wording is not already pre-printed or attached or otherwise suggested by the wording of the document then the notary must ask the client what's required to be done if the notary actively performed as an acknowledgment the notary will already know that by the wording the notary won't have to guess what's going to be required and the notary is not permitted to tell the client what is required if the client doesn't know then the client must find out from the entity that originated the document or who's going to be receiving the document okay now other states will have their own notary wording for acknowledgments and many documents that have been created in California will have wording that's different from the wording we just saw that's because notary law changes over time and many documents created in the past here in this state still retain old and outdated wording so this is the important rule about using different wording for acknowledgments if the document is going to be used in California the acknowledgement wording must be exactly word for word without any differences the same wording as we just saw we'll look at the wording again so you'll know what to look for now if the document is going to be used or recorded outside of California we may complete and seal that state's wording which is often by the way very different but we all need to read through that wording to ensure that it's not requiring a notary to certify the authorized capacity of a document signer for example or well to do anything else that's going to be illegal for a California notary to do if it does then you will not be able to complete that acknowledgement and you'll need to attach a California acknowledgments certificate that's called a loose certificate but you'll need to attach somehow a California acknowledgement to that document by the way don't use a paper clip for the attachment you should always attach the loose acknowledgment certificate with a staple now if a document is to be sent outside of the United States and the acknowledgement wording must be California acknowledgement wording and remember it must be in English the notary is not allowed to use an acknowledgement in another language even if the translation is accurate California notary wording in that language it must be in English so you might be wondering what an acknowledgement from another state may look like and how to determine if it contains wording that would be illegal for a notary in California to complete well this is an example of a notary acknowledgment from another state and this example requires a notary to verify or certify the authorized capacity of the document signer now notice that this acknowledgment requires that the document signer has proved to the notary his or her authorized capacity I changed the text color of this section to red this is an example of an acknowledgment that a notary in California may not complete even if the document is going to be used out of state part of the notaries responsibility is to verify the identity of the document signer not the title that the signer claims to hold in this case the notary would need to attach and complete a California acknowledgement or if there's sufficient room use an acknowledgement stamp be sure to use the notary seal only on the document with the correct acknowledgement wording in order to complete the connote ization according to California notary laws by the way and obtain the CD with lots of notary forms and that includes an unlimited supply of acknowledgement forms all right well let's take a look at California acknowledgement wording and how to fill out the acknowledgement the first thing to look for on an acknowledgement that is taken in the state of California is this disclaimer a statement now this disclaimer was added January 1st of 2015 so don't be surprised if you don't see it on a lot of the acknowledgments that you do unfortunately if it's not there and if the documents going to stay in California or it's going to be sent to another country you will need to add it and you'll there's a couple of ways to add it first of all obviously you could put a disclaimer stamp on it if you have a disclaimer stamp but secondly if you don't have a disclaimer stamp or if simply there's no room who doesn't fit then you can just add a what's called a loose certificate or a loose acknowledgement that you can obtain if you have our CD for example you just print out acknowledgement forms the disclaimer box a couple of things about that the first of all let's go through the disclaimer box so you see what it says it says a a notary public or other officer completing this certificate verifies only the identity of the individual who signed the document to which the certificate is attached and not the truthfulness accuracy of the validity of that document you see a lot of times when when the public looks at an acknowledgement they might have the assumption that the notary is actually doing something which legalizes the document which frankly is just not the case all we're doing is verifying identity now the other part about this disclaimer box is that if there is no disclaimer box on it as we said you need to add it above the venue which is the state of and county of section in the acknowledgement by the way the venue indicates where the acknowledgement was actually taken so it's going to obviously always be in the state of California since we're required to be located in the state of California to acknowledge someone's signature as a California notary public and the county is whatever county you and that document signer appeared in so that's called the venue another important part of the discussion with this disclaimer box is that the disclaimer box cannot be hand-drawn and it cannot be handwritten in it must be in an enclosed box and must be in a typeface font that is legible so again one of the things to look for on acknowledgments if it's taken in the state of California and it's going to stay in California going to a different country is does it have this disclaimer box already on there if it doesn't you'll need to add it or you'll need to use a different acknowledgement form all right let's continue on and we just talked about venue so again the venue is the location where the notary act occurred and by the way sometimes the venue has already been filled out for you in other words maybe a title comprehend escrow company or maybe an attorney has already filled out the venue for you and unfortunately it may be wrong if it's wrong just cross off the incorrect venue maybe it's an incorrect County or an even incorrect State for example maybe an escrow company has filled out the acknowledgement because the document is going to be sent back to another state and maybe they have an incorrect State on there so correct the state and correct the county if that's incorrect otherwise you would just be filling out the correct state in Clark County anything you need to cross off for example if you needed to correct a County anything you cross off be sure to initial and then correct all right let's start with the date and filling out this acknowledgement notice that the date here on this particular acknowledgement is January 29th 2015 and that's just happened to be the day that the notary filled out this acknowledgement I want you to notice though that the date of acknowledgement and the date of signature is different and that's okay because with an acknowledgement all we need to do is get the person to acknowledge their signature to us and it does not have to be the same day so we don't care when these signers signed the document what we're stating here is that the signers acknowledge their signature to us on this particular date now you'll notice that the notary has written out the month here January and that's a good practice so I would suggest continuing with that practice if they're if there's room before me notary Nick followed by comma notary public now the point here is of course the notaries name goes here but it must be followed by a comma and the words notary public if you fail to put the comma notary public after your name the county recorders going to reject this document so you do need to put a comma and follow that by notary public personally appeared William a Jones and Mary B Jones I want you to notice a couple of things here first of all we are completing one acknowledgment form for multiple signers and that's no problem at all we can complete a a single acknowledgement for multiple signers as long as both of those signers personally appear and when I say both signers what I really mean here is that just there just happened to be two signers on this document if there were three or four you could have done three or four however many names fit on this acknowledgement the point is you can come a single acknowledgment form for multiple signers now the second thing I want to point out is even though you're completing one acknowledgment form clearly you're still completing two separate acknowledgments we are completing any an acknowledgement for William a Jones and an acknowledgement for Mary B Jones we still need to get each of them to acknowledge that they've signed the document and we still need to ask each of them for their identification and when we complete our journal entries we're going to complete a single entry for each person so we'll end up having two journal entries on this so oh wait the second thing I want to point out here is that William a Jones and maybe Jones did not sign this this particular grant deed with a with a title but they could have their title could have been for example Trustee or maybe it was a property granted from a corporation and maybe they would have signed it was corporate officers the point is they could have signed it with a authorized capacity or with the title but if they did you would never include that authorized capacity or title in the acknowledgment wording itself you only put the person's name who signed the document and who proved their identity to you so that's an important point because sometimes again escrow computations of title companies or maybe attorneys will have already filled out this acknowledgement form for you and will have included those titles in this section if they are included you're not going to be able to complete that acknowledgement you will need to add a separate acknowledgement form or at the very minimum you're going to want to cross off an initial that title alright let's take a look at the body of the acknowledgment who proved to me on the basis of satisfactory evidence to be the persons whose names are subscribed notice that the notary has indicated the correct plural forms here subscribe to the within instrument and acknowledge to me that they executed the same in their authorized capacities and that by their signatures on the instrument the persons or the entity upon behalf of which the persons acted executed the instrument I certify under penalty of perjury under the law the state of California that the foregoing paragraph is true incorrect of course the notary signs here and then that puts their notary seal next to the signature by the way that notary seal needs to go next to the signature and if there is no room you'll have no choice but to add a separate acknowledgement form because you're not allowed to put the notary seal on top of wording or on top of any names or any lines or anything like that and you certainly can't just flip the page over and put it by itself on the backside he's sure to notice that the notary signs the acknowledgement under penalty of perjury and the penalties are very severe for falsifying the acknowledgement because of notary assigning the acknowledgement under penalty of perjury misrepresenting anything including dates names identifications or venue is considered forgery if the document pertains to a deed of trust the penalty may be even escalated from a misdemeanor to a felony never back date or predate an acknowledgment and never enter the name of someone who did not personally appear before you at the time of notarization you