What is Acknowledgment.

There is a misunderstanding of what Notary certificates when documents are notarized.

Lets break it down and take confusion away.

There are two most common notarial acts that are being performed by a Notary: acknowledgement and Jurat.

Note:Notary cannot tell a signer which form of Notarial act to do. Its illegal. A signer of a document needs to tell a Notary what he/she wants Notary to do.

Lets talk about Acknowledgement.

These are guarantees that Notary provides by motorizing paperwork with acknowledgement:

– signer of a document was physically present during notarization. Face time or Skype sessions are not physical presence

-signer was properly identified by a Notary by using appropriate and allowed forms of identification

-signer acknowledged that he/she signed the document or sign it in front of a Notary

-entire event was recorded in a Notary journal 

This might come as a surprise for a lot of people, but signer can sign document anytime and than have it Notarized. With acknowledgement, all signer needs to do is to confirm that he/she signed document to a notary.

Jurat is a document that shows that signer was  given an oath and swore that everything in a document he/she signed is true and correct.