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Posted by  JanetK_CA on 1/31/19 2:31pm
I always just staple an attached loose certificate to the signature page. That approach has passed muster with the SOS office when getting an apostille attached, so it's OK for CA, at least.
Here's my take for various other situations (from my CA perspective, of course...), based on what I believe is the purpose of, as well as the word of, the law. If a certificate is on the same page, then it's "part of" the document, since the signature and notarial certificate can't be separated, as long as the entire cert, notary signature, stamp, etc. are all on the same page, too. (If not, I replace.)
If a document creator includes an acceptable notary cert as the last page of a document, then IMO, it depends... I look for things like whether there's a bar code included, are there page numbers that continue to the notary certificate, etc. If there are clear indications that the document needs a notary certificate and one is included, i.e. that they belong together, then I don't typically staple.
If there's any question or doubt, stapling two pages together is easy. However, it's also easy to remove a staple, so I try to keep an eye out for situations where there's no clear indicator on either page that the notary certificate belongs to that specific signature page. In those cases, I write something like "see attached...", along with other document details, right on the bottom of the notary certificate. My own notary certs have space and lines for the usual types of "optional" info (including name of document, how many pages, etc.), but if there's one provided, (and I've seen many that have nothing more than just the required verbiage) I've been known to write in some of that info underneath my signature and stamp. The idea is to provide clear cross-referencing that they belong together.
I've never stapled the entire document together (unless the client wants it done) as I think that's likely to create more problems than it would solve, both for the notary and the document recipient. The latter could end up struggling to remove a heavy duty staple, potentially tearing docs (if not tearing out hair), given how common it is to scan docs these days.
Much of this applies more to GNW than anything else. But I can think of a couple of title co's, notorious for wanting lots of their docs notarized, who typically just attach a loose cert with no other details on either page.
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