Several states authorize their notaries to perform notarial acts in other states, provided that the document is to be used in the notary's home state (exactly what "used" means varies from state to state). Vermont is one of those states; at a seminar put on by the Vermont SOS I asked about this, and was told that the venue would be the place where the notarization took place. Before these laws authorizing notaries to act out-of-state under certain conditions, it was apparently common for states to appoint commissioners of deeds who lived in some distant state, to perform notarial acts on documents that were to be used in the appointing state.
So it seems the idea of an officer of one state acting in another state is not a new idea. What is new is the idea of an officer of one state performing a notarial act in another state when the document has nothing to do with the officer's state. |
