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Notarize countersign calculated

now we get to the good stuff now we're going to kind of move through this pretty quickly because we've said a lot of this what the notaries cannot do so again can't keep your notary seals and journals in the workplace keep them within your control can't share a journal can't even allow anyone else to hold or handle their notary seals or journals i mean it sounds really uh but just generally keep them to yourself right you don't want somebody saying that you let people handle it on a regular basis the the reason is that this is a slippery slope if you let somebody hold a touch look at the journal you allow a supervisor who isn't managing or supervising the notary program but if you let somebody get their hands on this that can become slippery slope to doing misdeeds with it so i'm going to put up a little plug in here too that when you are performing notary notarizations please use privacy guards okay identity theft is a serious topic it's important to use privacy guards to keep that information private one your signers are going to appreciate the fact that if they kept the other people's information private from me they're going to keep my information private from somebody else don't just hand over the journal you know when they sign so that they can see everything else that you've done it's nobody else's business you know what private she's talking about privacy guard is are these different mechanisms that you can use to slide down the page of a journal so that the signer won't see anything above and and won't worse comes to worst go out to target and get those big old sticky notes seen these those big old things like that they're like three dollars and 47 cents for a pack of 40 feet that's what we use their bright colors are really fun but you just stick it on there done can't see it and then you can pick them up and move them around to make sure that you've covered everything you need to whatever it takes just use something to guard the information that you use i would just love that to just be part of that okay can't notarize an employer company document and if any of the following is true now conflicts of interest oh god this is another one first and foremost can't do it if the notary is named in the document okay if it says mary smith we'll get this amount of money for doing this by when we sign this document you can't be the notary and be mary smith done work right the notary has drafted prepared or reviewed the document on pat you can't put a document together and go with this person and say okay this line means this this means this and this means that now sign here and says that everything i just told you is is true you can't wear both hats it's not a good idea this happens all the time there are some but it shouldn't ex there are sometimes it's a little different mortgage signers sometimes run into this issue but they're not employer notaries right a little different yeah so we are talking about something that is a best practice the the one that bothers me the most that isn't relevant here but to show you how bad it is is lawyers of course lawyers who have a notary commission all the time they draft documents for their own clients they then have the clients come in and the notaries notarize the client document that they themselves have prepared for their clients and for which there's uh charging them hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars to have drafted or prepared those documents what a conflict of interest that seems to be to to kelsea to me and to a lot of others but notary but the statutes don't prohibit it and so lawyers do this all the time employees employees who are notaries should be bound by the same ethical practice they should not be drafting preparing reviewing consulting on documents and then notarizing those same documents because they're not impartial at that point if you've drafted the document and then you're going to notarize it you're not impartial it seems to us so stay away from it even though it's not prohibited by any statute don't do it just to keep yourself from the possibility that somebody's going to challenge one of those documents sometime and again the notary has a direct financial interest in other words they put this document together if this they sign that you will get some money whether or not it says that in there or not that's the other conflict of interest right but now i get the point well if it's in the company's best interest to have something notarized which it must be otherwise why bother right and i'm an employee of the company if the comp if the company benefits then i benefit doesn't that make everything i do for my employer a conflict of interest there luckily is one statute that seems to be for every state i have not seen it in any territory that i have not missed it where it says if you are a director an employee an officer of a company you are still allowed to provide notarizations generally for that for that employer that relieves that particular conflict of interest we're talking about that wouldn't apply if the employee notary is getting a finder's fee a procurement fee a commission or something for that particular document though that that's our point here the difference is whether the employee might have a financial interest under some circumstances can't refuse to process lawful requests for access to notary journal entries okay i told you keep that journal safe but if your employer provides you with written requests for certain journal entries you must provide those journal entries to your employer but they must ask for them in writing like anybody else would be required to in order to see journal entries you must allow for that even if it's not for the employer if it's somebody from the outside if they give you a lawful request for a journal entry you must comply to that whether or not your notary employer wants you to you don't have a choice we we should say that this again is one of those subjects though whether where state notary laws do not talk about accessing notary journals unfortunately this is one of the things that is covered in the the book's coverage of all those many topics where the statutes don't address when and how to do this but it is the the notary journal since the notary is a public official the journal is a public record of sorts isn't it it's the record of a public official and public records are available through public records laws and generally they are accessible at least in limited circumstances to members of the public so you need to think about this look into it find something to read about the issues involved and how to go about doing accessing of journal entries including by the way i don't don't let me go too far here but since if if you get a request from somebody to get access to your journal and then when you make a decision either to grant access or to deny it what have you just done you've engaged in an official act so therefore every time you get a request for access whether you grant it or deny it you've conducted an official act you need to make a journal entry for that request for access to say again every time you get a request regardless of how you handle it you need to do another journal entry now for that request for access to your notifications even in cases where we're supervising as i said i do journal checks we still pre send each notary we're going to do a journal check written request and specifically these journal entries for this period of time i have to do it i send it to them in advance in writing before they can send before i can get it access good for you no i i bet i bet others may not be doing it i don't think they do but they should because it's that's a it respects it and then you can't charge notary clients more than the statutory maximum fees just because maybe your employer is taking a cut of that which this gets very complicated i am begging you i don't know that we are going to have time to really dig into this in terms of who gets what fees and how much money if there's going to be charges and i find that a lot of times especially if you're in a large company and you're a notary for a large company you just don't bother to charge which is you're right by the way and that would be fine too but there this is a complicated series of things if you have specific questions on this let's talk about that afterwards see michael or i read it in the book this gets complicated but it's not all that common once it's set out once you've got it set out then it then it as long as it's right you should be okay can't so i love the notaries that call me and say oh i keep a copy of everything i notarize there goes my hair dye again no no no none of your business not okay you've got your journal entry that's all you need you don't need to keep a copy of everything you do don't keep a copy of their id either hair dye please just journal it carefully can completely that's all you need can't avoid personal civil and criminal liability responsibility for wrongdoing just because your employer said to do it think of the notary in wisconsin bankrupt she's 59. okay you cannot avoid it just because your employer told you to do it so even though it may be a difficult conversation to have and i hope that it's not and if your employer is really a mess have them call me i'll be happy to discuss it with them right but please say no in the politest nicest conciliatory way beg them but say no i really can't well and tell them why the the reason why is there's liability problem this is no different from the law in other parts of the uh the world of things not just in the notary area but it's not a defense it's not a legal defense in other words for a notary to say i'm not at fault because the employer told me to do it the wrong way that won't work it's the same thing if if i hold a gun to her head and tell her to rob the bank and she robs the bank because i'm threatening her she's still going to be criminally liable for something there me too but she doesn't get to say oh he threatened me it's not a defense all right this is employers all right here you go okay um there are a bunch of things employers cannot do they cannot request instructor direct notaries to treat some notary clients differently or preferentially in the provision or charging for notarial services we're talking about notaries here if if they've got a favorite client and they want to treat them special in other ways that's up to them but in regard to notary services and fees can't do that it has to be one or the other right you have to have a set policy this is the policy we've we already mentioned the second one employers cannot access notary journal entries for company transactions or other non-business notarizations without following the same procedure as required for anybody else again we said up front today if your state law says something different obey your state law california has a special law on this that may be different from this so don't be confused on every little thing but other than california i believe that this is correct everywhere else and then the third one here employers cannot obtain possession or ownership of notary seals or journals at the expiration of notary commissions when the employment terminates or at any other time we've already been through that one so i think we can move on next employers cannot unless a statute or regulation of the commissioning jurisdiction provides otherwise here we go with these retain or share notary fees collected from notary clients the lawyer in me wants to tell you why if if you don't want your employer taking some of the fees that you might collect at the workplace or sharing in fees you could politely remind the employer that especially by taking the fees or sharing the fees for notarizations they are almost certainly going to be liable if you make any mistakes it is possible depending on the circumstances it is possible that the company will not have liability we call it liability vicarious liability and law there is the possibility a company won't have liability for the errors and omissions of company notary depends on the circumstances but if the company is sharing in fees or taking the fees for a notary employee you can bet 100 percent the company is going to have liability if the notary makes a mistake so if the boss wants to take some of the fees the boss is pretty well making a choice to at least have legal responsibility companies should be careful before they do this the other reason for this rule uh or best practice i guess i should call it is that the company isn't the notary you're the notary what entitles the company to be taking part of the fee for a public official who holds a commission and has full personal liability what entitles the employer to otherwise be taking or sharing in those fees so this is a general rule best practice unless a statute and again california and a few other states have a statute that may allow the employee notary and the company to agree they say agree when in fact we know what really happens the boss says we're going to take the year we're going to share it but if the the employee and the employer agree um in some states this can be done um but it's important to make sure that they tell you that in advance that you guys that there's a discussion ahead of time that with this is going to be our policy then if a new person comes on board and they want it going to be a notary that they tell them about it and for it ahead of time and that that it doesn't does in fact comply with the state statutes if there are any on this topic and again this is another situation where one size doesn't fit all certain note certain companies don't care to charge fees because it's actually a service and they are fine with that and that works for them but other companies like you've seen them out there that provide notary services in places that you ship packages and things and dry cleaners in the east coast which i've never quite got that connection but they do provide notary services and that's part of their business service options that they provide in which case they are charging a fee and they are keeping some of it so that's a different situation so again you have to determine this talk about this with your employer if you're setting up a program you gotta this is one of the things you're definitely going to have to talk about in advance set up a policy about that is compliant with your state statutes if there are any and best practices this last one i i sort of alluded to earlier but employers cannot avoid civil liability for notary wrongdoing in two situations one is obvious if the employer is the one who requested instructed or directed the notary employee to improperly perform a notarization if the boss told you to do something wrong you did it the boss you're going to have liability but so is the employer the other time that the employer is going to be liable is where employers have done nothing improper at all haven't done a thing wrong but where the notary employee nevertheless makes a negligent or an intentional error or omission while being in the scope of employment this is called the common law doctrine of vicarious liability i i don't want to get deeply into this at all except if you will if you want to find out more you can read about vicarious liability but believe it or not this is basically no fault liability isn't it no fault liability if you're in the scope of your employment as a notary and you make a mistake it happens occasionally the company is still going to have liability in most states in the united states under the common law because in old england they decide it's the right thing to do it's the right thing to cause the party with the deeper pocket to pay for injuries caused by that employer with the deeper pockets employees yeah it goes back to the 1700s we adopted it in this country um by our common law we followed what old england was doing and and so it's this is informational for the most part but this is what you'd use to go back to an employer and say why we need a notary program because whether or not you put together a notary program if you have employee notaries you are still going to be at risk you will be at less risk if our notaries are trained and supervised and carefully you know and monitored you are at less risk but you are at risk regardless so you might as well mitigate that risk as much as you can for both of our sakes right that's how you can get employed that's how you get the program yes for notaries please get notary education get continuing notary education if you go back to your offices and you have friends who are notaries in your co-workers who are notaries and they're like oh why would i bother with that please have one of these books and say oh i don't know because this is what you don't know you don't know please please be a part of that wolf pack right help them understand that it matters that what they're doing has consequences and that they don't know what they don't know and their state didn't tell them should keep copies of state or territorial notice statute and regulations we keep them we send them out to our employees regularly and we ask them to keep them with their journal right there know them understand them do the best you can if you don't understand something in your statutes call the nna call nli call somebody who's an ethical representation and ask questions and the other thing is right here in the next phrase or simply look up your state's handbook or guidebook that's online these many of these are very good many of these are saying the very same things that we've talked about that aren't in the statute but the secretaries of state have figured out what are many of the best practices and so some of this material is going to be in their handbooks and guidelines and you can just google it google montana state notary statutes you will get several options easy to get your hands on you should request employers to pay for notary liability insurance in appropriate levels of coverage one size does not fit all there are companies that provide very basic notarizations that their business insurance is going to cover and the risk that their employee their employee notaries are going to actually run into issues with again if they're only doing very basic state requested things that's all they do the risks are pretty low so adding additional liability insurance is sometimes a thing that keeps employers from allowing a notary program i would rather have an ounce of prevention than this liability insurance trying to get the the lot the notaries out of trouble once they're already in it if i can keep them out of trouble in the first place that's what i would prefer most just for the stress right but if but if the company and the notary are doing notarizations for customers strangers if they are taking on some regularly contentious documents wills states power of attorneys uh deeds this is this is what you want to look at and and you ought to suggest to the employer that they check their policy a lot of them will say oh we're covered we've got an umbrella policy they think that umbrella is some magic term that means that everything on earth is covered and it's not necessarily the the case are are any of you notaries at law firms any law firm notaries uh here okay some of those law firm policy malpractice policies don't cover notary misconduct so they need to check you need to make sure that the company and the employee and your employer needs to make sure that the company if it has insurance that it specifically covers notary malpractice so you should recognize that the higher the notary is positioned in the employment hierarchy and the more important the document or its underlying transaction the more likely the notary should not notarize the document this is one of those things where again i talk i mean i have to talk about in most of my in our most experienced which is advisor offices we do not like advisors to be notaries because advisors always want to do what's in the best interests of their client where they want to make it easier for their client right which may conflict sometimes with best practices we would rather have it be somebody in the office their office manager their office employees that hold the notarization and can do it for their clients and a lot of times we like to have two approved notaries in each office because if you have multiple advisors well then the assistant to this advisor actually does that advisor's notarizations and the other way around again we're trying to alleviate some of the possibility of conflicts of interest okay and again it's to protect against the the a possible challenge it's better to be safe than sorry here uh in in regard to impartiality should work respectfully and professionally with employers if issues or conflicts arise all right it does not have to be contentious you don't have to be in a like full-on war with your boss that's not what we're asking again if you try and have this conversation ahead of time keep it professional talk about the importance of why it's important for your employers as well as your notaries to have a program and a supervisor of that program that creates this buffer it it alleviates a lot of these things but try and do it ahead of time and agreeable most of the time that will help mitigate most of the serious issues the uh if i i just recently finished with a case i was involved in um where um and a notary uh did a lot of notarizations for the boss and the notary was afraid of the boss um and the notary did a notarization for the boss that was a verification on oath or affirmation the notary uh did not do the oath because the notary was afraid since the boss always just left the documents on the notary's desk and wanted the notary to to sign and notarize and not be bothered so the notary didn't swear the notary didn't swear the boss in turned out the boss had lied in the document and the lie was discovered and the boss was charged with perjury a felony turns out the boss said hey i didn't take an oath and the notary admitted she hadn't administered an oath to the boss so it turned out that the notary had then committed a crime you know we haven't mentioned this today but in most states in almost all the states of this country if a notary fails to perform a required act such as administering an oath for a juror that is called official misconduct is the crime almost every state has an official misconduct law listen to that word it's a crime yes crime so it turned out the notary in this case was facing a possible criminal charge as well but the state granted immunity to the notary so that the notary would testify against the boss they wanted the notary to roll over on the boss but you better not count on that yeah uh well right right it makes it not count on that so the point is again with holding that that thing the whole point of an oath right is to nail they want to be able to say if it isn't right that they can go after somebody for perjury really right if you say something is true and it's not and you swear it then that's you've perjured yourself if they can't go after that person for perjury because you didn't put them under oath they're going to go after somebody and guess who it's going to be so the point of the example is there is a true risk if you let the boss control your performance as a notary turned out in that case since the boss hadn't taken an oath they he couldn't be prosecuted for perjury he was charged with something else but it was a real bad situation right that would not be a pleasant workplace after this was all found out so avoid that so let me ask you a question how many of you were notaries before you ever took any notary training all right did you ever perform something that after you took notary training you went oh dear yeah can you see how that happens right state didn't tell me state didn't explain the point the difference between acknowledgements and girats it's not in statutes right only notary training can truly help you understand how to do this properly just getting a copy of the statutes isn't enough and that's what you have to help your employers understand that training is the thing that matters and the states don't provide it why not if you're going to commission somebody to do something why aren't you telling him what to do okay this is another one of those where he and i disagree necessarily he says keep one at home and i s and then have one at work okay i like one journal i like one pattern of behavior for everything i do but tr if you're going to be traipsing it back and forth then i would rather that you have it there but a lot of employer notaries that i know they just they only do it at work i'm not doing it for my neighbors necessarily i don't necessarily broadcast that out and so generally i keep my stuff at work locked up okay and i would rather you did that one or the other right if you're gonna have go back and forth then have two but if you're gonna just do it in one place don't traipse it back and forth with you because you will lose it i will have lost at least six no six journals now i've been told have been lost in their car they must have very big again one or two states one or two states in the country don't allow this they permit only one present active journal at a time but if the state law doesn't prohibit this it's up to you to decide how you want to handle i'm just telling you people lose amazing stuff and they will lose it they lost it in a move i'd be willing to take some questions for a few minutes the question is if you're notarizing for somebody uh more often than one time do you need to do identification all the time no because if you have a if you have a solid understanding you can use personal knowledge in most states i don't is there any state that doesn't california yeah some states don't allow that but yes in that instance you're going to have to provide that it's yes it's a pain here's one where we disagree i would ask for identification every single time why not because i don't know who i'm dealing with at that point because i want to be able to write it in my journal that i saw id and i want to put the issuance or expiration date or so on because it's one thing for me to say oh yes i knew from personal knowledge this person and so on but if i have it in writing you know if if i say i know somebody personally that that's ambiguous about how long do you have to know under what some circumstances do you have to know somebody to me it's a lot safer for me as a notary to get id every time record it in my journal so that if if there's a challenge i can say look uh right you're a lawyer and i'm an admin let's say and i'm doing notarizations for my boss 55 times and my state does not require me to do an id every single time now your boss how long have they been your boss here's my test you're on vacation in fiji you're walking down the beach in fiji on vacation and your boss walks down the beach and you're gonna go joe what are you doing here man i thought you were supposed to be over here you know him by sight you know his name of his kids you know who he's in i know the admins right every single time probably not that's where personal knowledge can come in you are going to get further because if you id somebody without needing to your state doesn't require that and you want to pull out this id every time that's when you're going to have these issues where employers don't want to do this right so keep but you have to make sure that it's clear personal knowledge cannot mean i had a lady we have a corporate office in minneapolis there's 8 357 people in that office literally that's our office she said well if they work in this building i say personal knowledge hair dye you cannot justify that you personally know every eight thousand eight thousand people are you nuts so be pay attention think this through okay so tell him the state statute says i'm supposed to look at your id every time just every time you come have it with you do you have your id with you yes show it wave it at me okay is it changed in any way since the last time we did a notarization have you renewed it has it got a different number did you move as long as it hasn't changed yeah yes okay well you get to choose what you are willing to notarize and not notarize and if he's not going to have you let you charge for it say that i'm not really going to be able to process these documents i'm sorry that's not a reasonable request the the question is if you're going to be a notary should you have a company like an llc of course that that's going to depend on uh if if you're just doing occasional notarizations for a few dollars i i don't think that i'd bother uh having an llc is is not going to by the way oh i see what you're concerned about you're concerned about liability and a public official can't be an llc so you're not going to be able to do an llc as an individual for your individual notarization of documents now if you wanted to have uh a notarization course you'd be better off getting personal liability insurance yeah if you wanted to have a company a mobile notary company or a company the company can have an llc and you can get you can purchase insurance that way but you're not going to avoid liability as a notary under the llc laws because you're a public official right nna has a hotline the american society of notaries has a a toll-free number so if you don't have a program there's your buffer remember i told you somebody between them so you could say to your boss oh no no i totally would do this but i just called the nli and they say we can't do that we'll be in trouble oh okay as long as they say it now it's okay and it removes that our last comment question or remember journaling right it asks you what you charged if you don't charge anything write zero yeah right if you get audited by the irs if you didn't put anything they can assume that you charged up to the statute of limitation what you were allowed to by your state statutes and if you didn't claim that as income on your taxes you can be in trouble so just write zero if you didn't charge we appreciate you hopefully this was helpful thank you thank you go be part of the wolf pack you