"Of particular interest is the potential conflict between a state's remote notarization procedures and their real estate statutes, determination of state/county venues and states recognizing each other's REMOTE notarizations, county recorders issues, ID concerns, ad infinitum."
Roger, THANK YOU for sharing.
These are the SAME concerns that were voiced TWENTY years ago when e-notarization, not always remote, came up. The big picture: To be practical in the save time, increase profits world, remote notarization must comply with each state's real estate, trust and estate planning/probate laws. For example, it means each State must have a team of lawyers comparing its real estate laws with its notarization laws to make sure they do not conflict and, if so, change/update the current real estate laws for the use of remote notarization. (Getting elected officials on board to re-write the laws and getting the votes to pass the changes.) For example, what is the written law regarding venue when there is a dispute and the document doesn't name which state law will rule: Does the law of the location of the document signer or the location of the remote notary rule?
Big Gorilla in the room: Who maintains and stores the remote notary's records: the notary or the entity's services that the notary has contracted to us? (It can't be per lender or per title company, that morphs into many, many multiple journals.) What is the minimum cyber-security requirement for these records; i.e., if a "hack" is discovered who has to notify ALL the document signers that their information has been stolen, how soon (30 days from discovery), how to notify each document signer - and what is the minimum cyber-insurance coverage required for each notary's e-journal records? Each state decides how long the remote journal must be stored, in what format, what if the technology changes - "old" e-journals will still need to be accessed, who pays for the hardware and constant software upgrades to access the "old" e-journals - what if the software company goes out of business? Whose journal state law rules: Is California OK with a real estate loan secured by California property, where the signer is sitting in California, and the remote notary is sitting in Delaware, following the cyber-storage requirements of Delaware? Easy question when the signer and notary are face-to-face in the same state, not so easy if the signer is signing in California and the notary is notarizing in Delaware.
As I stated, these were some of the questions asked twenty years ago. Questions are easy; the answers are difficult. There are many reasons the same questions are still being asked and the answers are fuzzy or, worse yet, answers to-be-determined by a future lawsuit. |
