The NNA made a blog post saying that notaries should prepare to help Los Angeles area residents recover from the wildfires.
https://www.nationalnotary.org/notary-bulletin/blog/2025/01/socal-notaries-prepare-to-help-wildfire-victims-in-the-coming-months
I volunteer with a national disaster organization and my activities are in Vermont. I have a few observations from experience with home fires & hurricanes.
-People don't always recover in the same state where the disaster occurred. I've helped hurricane clients who evacuated from Texas or Florida and came to Vermont because they had relatives here.
-I've never been asked to perform a notarization in connection with a disaster. I'm not saying it can't happen, just that nobody asked ME.
-Fraud does happen now and then. Someone hears about the disaster, and claims to have been affected when they didn't actually live near the disaster.
-For RULONA states like mine, if the signer doesn't have ID, the list of IDs that can be used to identify a credible witness are stricter than what the signer could have used.
For example, the credible witness can't be identified by another credible witness. Also, if a signer lacks a "passport, driver’s license, or government-issued nondriver identification card" but has "another form of government identification issued to an individual, which is current or expired not more than three years before performance of the notarial act, contains the signature or a photograph of the individual, and is satisfactory to the officer" that's OK. But if a credible witness is used, and the notary doesn't personally know the witness, then the witness must show "a passport, driver’s license, or government-issued nondriver identification card". The other kinds of ID aren't acceptable. |