The notary public commission represents a serious duty with a substantial effect on legal documents and their validity. Because of the importance of the notary public’s role, and because a notarization has distinct legal repercussions, it is important that each notarial act be done correctly. Each notarial act has its own requirements for what steps need to be taken.
Generally, there are 3 steps that must be taken for each notarization:
In addition to these steps, the notary must keep in mind the most important rule of performing notarizations: physical presence.
Under Washington state law, in all cases the signing party must “appear physically” before the notary, which means that they must be in the physical presence of the notary at the time of the notarial act. Using video communication software or other means of communicating over distances is not permitted. The physical presence rule applies to any signing party, even if they are personally known to the notary. This is also true for electronic notarizations of documents: the signing party or parties must be in the physical presence of the notary even though the documents will be on a computer or online.