Hague Convention

New York Mobile Notarys offers an end to end Apostille Service. We come to your home or office to properly Notarize the document. We also retrieve documents that have already been been notarized. Upon arrival, we inspect the document to make sure that is has been properly executed and notarized with the correct verbiage on the document. We then in turn take the document to the respective County Clerk and then to the Department of State. We either hand deliver or Fedex the document back to the signatory or their clients.

Our prices are very competitive with discounts applied to multiple documents. Our turnaround time is 24 hours.

Apostille

An Apostille (pronounced App-oh-steel) is a French word meaning certification. It is a standard certification that many governments, both foreign and domestic, use to certify that a document is genuine and can be officially recognized.

Apostille certificates are issued by the Secretary of State of the government only for documents which have been signed by a Notary Public of that same state. It does not certify that the original document’s content is correct, however. They are one page documents embossed with the Great Seal of a State. An Apostille certificate can be obtained for virtually any public document. An Apostille is effective upon the date it is issued. An Apostille cannot be “back-dated.”

If the country where the document will be used is not a party to the Convention, you will have to begin the cumbersome, time-consuming process of obtaining a series of certifications known as the “legalization”.
What are elements?

An Apostille consists of the following:
1. the name of country from which the document emanates;
2. the name of person signing the document;
3. the capacity in which the person signing the document has acted;
5. the place of certification;
6. the date of certification;
7. the authority issuing the certificate;
8. the seal or stamp of authority issuing certificate; and
9. the signature of authority issuing certificate.

Note: The “Apostille” attests to the validity of the signature of the notary public, county official or state official, but not of the underlying signature nor of the contents of the document.

An apostille certifies the authenticity of the issuing official’s or notary public’s signature on the document, the capacity in which the person has acted, and identifies the seal/stamp which the document bears. Any receiving party can verify the authenticity of an issued apostille by comparing the apostille number and date to the information to the apostille register.

Just a simple notarization is not enough, you might be asked to get your documents apostilled. This is known as ‘Superlegalization’ or ‘Legalization of documents for overseas use’. Normally the validation of documents, for using in one country to another, used to be a tedious job involving a chain of paper work. To bypass this, you have to do is just get your documents apostilled. Once this is done, your document (say travel document) is recognized worldwide. Not all countries can issue apostille, only the countries of Hague Convention can issue apostille.

How are apostilles affixed to public documents?

An Apostille must be placed directly on the public document itself or on a separate attached page (called an allonge). Apostilles may be affixed by various means, including rubber stamps, self-adhesive stickers, impressed seals, etc. If an Apostille is placed on an allonge, the letter can be attached to the underlying public document by a variety of means, including glue, grommets, staples, ribbons, wax seals, etc. While all of these means are acceptable under the Convention, Competent Authorities are encouraged to use more secure methods of affixation so as to safeguard the integrity of the Apostille. You should never detach an Apostille, regardless of weather it is placed directly on the public document or on an allonge.

Apostille is the legalization of a document for international use under the terms of the 1961 Hague Convention. Countries around the world have adopted this validation procedure for its simplicity and worldwide acceptance. Apostille certificates are issued by a state government only for documents which have been signed by a Notary Public of that same state.
Once a document has been Apostilled, thereby providing official government authentication of the signatures and stamps appearing on it, it is automatically deemed “legalized” for use in another member country.

An apostille certifies the authenticity of the issuing official’s or notary public’s signature on the document, the capacity in which the person has acted, and identifies the seal/stamp which the document bears. Any receiving party can verify the authenticity of an issued apostille by comparing the apostille number and date to the information in our apostille register.