The Vermont Legislature has made available a new revision of a bill to overhaul the law on notaries public:
https://legislature.vermont.gov/committee/document/2018/26/Bill/4162427#documents-section
In the versions up to now, the law just said that a notary could make official copies.
The new version of the short certificate would say, in part,
"to the best of my [the notary's] knowledge, the photocopied document is neither a public record nor a publicly recordable document, certified copies of which are available from an official source other than a notary public."
(There are other problems with attested copies that I won't go into in this post.)
I know some other states have similar language. In most cases, these seems wise; people shouln't be getting official copies of deeds from notaries if official copies are available from the county clerks. But I see two problems with this language.
1. A customer may need a certified copy before the recorded version becomes available. For example, a person might want a certified copy of a deed to prove residency for school registration, library card, tax benefits to residents of a state, etc., during the months that the deed wends its way from the title company to the county clerk. Or maybe the signer wants a certified copy in case it gets lost in the mail, or by the agency that's suppose to record it.
2. The document might be from a foreign country where an official copy is theoretically available, but not available in practice due to anarchy, unfriendly relations with the US, or the need to pay bribes to get anything done.
Have notaries in states that have language like this had problems with this sort of thing?
|
