Notaries
What is a notary?
Notaries are experienced lawyers appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, based on their qualifications and experience. Tim Somerville has been a notary since 1989 and Stephen Lynch is a notary working at our Newcastle office.
They are authorised to witness signatures and certify international documents.
How do you have a document notarised?
Bring the documents to our office in North Sydney or Newcastle. If our notary needs to witness a person’s signature, that person must come to our office.
Contact us on (02) 9923 2321 or email enquiries@somervillelegal.com.au for a fixed quote or an appointment. Most international documents are needed urgently. If so, an appointment can usually be arranged within 24 hours or even sooner.
What do you bring?
If Tim or Stephen is witnessing your signature, you must bring photo identification, like a passport or driver’s licence.
However, if all you need is a copy certified as a true copy of original, all you need to bring is the original.
Can the notary come to you?
It is cheaper for you to come to our office. However, Tim or Stephen will notarise documents at your home or office if required. This is useful if you are trying to get a number of people together to sign a document at the same time.
How can you certify documents when there is no original?
Some documents like government records or bank statements can only be found online. How can you get a certified copy when there is no hard copy paper original? The solution is, when you come to our office you show the notary the website where he can see that the website is official, and check the original document online. He can then certify a true copy of the original. Alternatively, some modern documents contain a QR code linking to the website of the organisation that issued the document. If so, the notary can simply scan the QR code to verify the authenticity of the document, then notarise it.
What does it cost?
The fees for notarising documents at our office are $120 for one document and $30 per document for any additional documents, plus GST. The fee for Apostille is $220 plus GST, and government fees of $102 per document.
What do you do after the documents are notarised?
Most notarised documents are required by overseas governments or lawyers. Their requirements vary from country to country and even from department to department.
Often, after the documents are notarised, they must be certified by the Australian government to authenticate Tim’s or Stephen’s notarial seal. This process is called Apostille, We can arrange this for you.
Sometimes the documents need to be certified by a foreign embassy or consulate. We can also arrange this.
You should check with whoever sent you the documents to find out whether Apostille or any other authentication is required.
What is an Apostille?
Contact us on (02) 9923 2321 or email enquiries@somervillelegal.com.au for a fixed quote or an appointment.