Having A Document Notarized Correctly Is Worth The Effort
When I first got out of law school, I was a licensed notary public. The partner who I often worked for said: “Are you crazy? If you’re smart you’ll get rid of that as soon as possible.” The idea was that everyone would want me to notarize signatures that weren’t signed in front of me so that clients, spouses, and neighbors wouldn’t be inconvenienced by actually having to see a notary. Obviously, refusing to help is not a great spot for a junior associate.
This is not a theoretical problem for any notary, or for clients who can be made to look, at best, like people who take the easy way-out, or, at worst, like liars. For example, I once had a client who had a document notarized in the State of New York, County of Kings, aka, Brooklyn. At his deposition, he was asked if he had ever been to Brooklyn. Oops, no. Not great for a misrepresentation defendant. (Fortunately, the document was signed long before his defense counsel had anything to do with this.)
A recent Seventh Circuit decision, Ponsetti v. GE Pension Plan, discusses a similar problem, with a more profound result – the notarized document, which purported to consent to a change of beneficiary, was not given effect. In the litigation challenging the plan's refusal to give effect to the change, an affidavit prepared by the notary admitting that she had not actually witnessed the signature was among the evidence showing that the consent could not be valid. Not a pretty picture for anyone involved. The beneficiary was not changed, and, I suspect, there was a lot of grief for the notary. The case has a good discussion of this area of the law.
My license expired without renewal.
