I didn't want my Notary Public to attach a separate page, I wanted her to stamp on my document!
Recently, my customer presented me with a document in which the notarial certificate (that part where I sign and stamp) needed to be more explicit in stating intentions as the notary and the signer for that document. It wanted to simultaneously be a jurat AND an acknowledgment.
"What does that even mean?" I can hear you asking. Well, a jurat says that the signer, my customer, took an oath swearing under penalty of perjury that the document contents were the truth to the best of his knowledge. And an acknowledgment said that I verified that he was the person signing his name, that he wasn't under duress, and that he was capable of deciding to sign the document. A jurat and an acknowledgment are two very different things.
So I asked him how he preferred to have his document notarized. "Oh," he said; he then assured me that he had always had this type of document notarized without problem before.
We cannot notarize a hybrid notarial certificate in Arizona as he had in his document. It doesn't matter that another notary did it in the past; it's not legal. So my customer had to choose between a jurat and an acknowledgment, and I had to attach it as a loose certificate.
This poor customer did not want a loose certificate; he was pretty sure it was invalid. He asked me to stamp on his document and still attach the loose certificate if I had to use one. You can imagine his dismay when I explained that my stamp and signature need to be together and not split across pages, documents, or certificates. He wondered if I even knew what I was doing. And it was not his fault.
So many times before, he's had a notary do as he asked, even though it was incorrect and a fraudulent notarization. That's right, those prior notarizations on that notarial certificate were fraudulent according to Arizona law.
If a notary needs to attach a loose certificate, it is b/c they know AZ law. They know their signature and stamp can't be on the next page when all the other components of the notarial certificate are on the previous page. This knowledgeable notary will recognize that a notarial certificate may not comply with the Arizona Revised State Statutes.
Most importantly, attaching a loose certificate is legal and compliant for any document across all 50 states.
The biggest takeaway I hope you get from this article is the importance of choosing a notary who can identify when a loose certificate is required because they know Arizona laws.