Thanks to the hard work of Katina (stoli). (And thank you so much for sharing it with me) It seems the SOS and the County Recorder have weighed in. First is the letter from the SOS regarding the information presented in the NNA's bulletin. Katrina wrote them and they wrote back. I have Katrina's permission to post it here. "Thank you for contacting the Secretary of State’s office with your inquiry relating to the use of personal pronouns within the California Certificate of Acknowledgment. Although the Secretary of State’s office does not oversee the business practices of the county clerk’s offices, it is our understanding based upon the copy of the enclosed letter that the intent of the author of the legislation revising Civil Code section 1189 in 2005 (AB 361 Runner) was to allow a notary public to modify the Certificate of Acknowledgment to apply to the particular circumstances of the notarial act as described below: The Certificate of Acknowledgment contains (s), (ies) and words separated by slashes: “person(s)”, "is/are," "he/she/they," and "his/her/their," “signature(s)” and “capacity(ies)”. The notary public may personalize or customize by including for example, only "are" " they" or " their" depending on the circumstances of the notarization. The notary public can specify by circling what is applicable or lining out what is not applicable. Only language which appears in () or separated by slashes can be personalized or customized to fit the specific notarization. For example, a notary public may circle or line out the (s) or (ies) which do not apply or the notary public may create a Certificate of Acknowledgment in the form required by Civil Code section 1189 which specifies if the signer is a man, woman or group (“he”, “she”, “they”) or if there are multiple signers or signatures (“signature” or ‘signatures”). No language can be added to the Certificate of Acknowledgment other than to complete the blanks where indicated for the county, date, name and title of the notary/officer and name of signer(s). The Certificate of Acknowledgment must have all of its parts, venue, text, signature and seal as they appear in Civil Code section 1189. We hope this information is helpful to you. If you have any questions, or if we can assist you on another matter related to the Secretary of State’s office, please contact us again.
Sincerely, Notary Public & Special Filings Section"
Now Katrina also contacted the County Clerk. Here is what they had to say when asked to weigh in. Katrina spoke with Donna Allred, County Clerk Recorder (916) 874-7855. Ms. Allred stated they have a communication system that all the county recorders offices use to communicate with each other. It is called "RecNet". It seems the NNA's misinformation bulletin created quite a stir between all the recorder's offices on this subject. I suspect this is due to all of your calls and email's. Good Job! Bottom line! Per the county clerk in Sacramento, every one of the responding recorders WILL NOT enforce this misinformation and will not reject documents based on the information in the NNA Bulletin.
So as far as Stoli and I are concerned we will be striking our certificates as usual.... I bet money that the SOS will be contacting the NNA here shortly.
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