As a Notary Public, dealing with lender, mortgage officers, and title companies is a common occurrence. Sometime in the course of notarizing loan documents, there is a mistake made, or the lender made a mistake and wants to update something on the documents. They will call and indicate that the borrowers already signed the document and they just need a new notarial certificate immediately in order to close the loan/mortgage process and issue funds to the borrowers. Upon indicating that we would be happy to have the document resigned and notarized again with the borrowers, lenders sometimes say that its already been signer by the borrowers and overnighted back to them and they are requesting that you send them a new notary certificate because you already notarized the document before and this is just to “update” or “correct it”. This is completely illegal. Loose certificates can never be mailed or provided to someone. Any certificate that has the notaries signature and seal on it must be affixed to the documents by the Notary Public. Period. Even if there is an error on behalf of the Notary Public, they must travel to where the document are and personally and physically reattach/renotarize the documents or be sent new copies of the documents to do a new notarization with the signers once again being present in front of the Notary.

Many lenders will insist that other notaries do this all the time, that its ok and they are notary and have done it too, but it is against the law to mail a loose notary certificate that has been completed, signed and stamped. The Notary Public must attach the certificate to the documents. Why is this a law? Most likely to prevent the loose notarial certificate from being reattached to a wrong/different document, to prevent fraud, and to ensure that the signers did see and sign the document in front of the Notary Public. Regardless of whether the Notary made an error, or the signers, or the company preparing the documents, the Notary Public cannot just provide an certificate by mail or without the documents being present in person.