Silicon Valley Legal Bible（31）Notarization Why American Notaries Don't Verify Document Content?

Imagine this: A penniless individual writes "I am the world's richest person" on paper, signs it, and obtains flawless notarization from a U.S. notary. "Wouldn't this cause societal chaos?" you might ask. Yet this is standard practice in American notarization.

Contrast this with China's notarization scenarios:

• A notary is called to the competition site to ensure the fairness of the competition judges;

• When parents pass away, children need to obtain a death notarization to inherit the estate;

• When a document is originally in Chinese and translated into English,

• notarization means that the translation is consistent with the original.

All these services are unavailable through U.S. notarization.

Today we will talk about the concept of "Notarization".

Silicon Valley Treasure Book 42 Chapters, a legal encyclopedia tailored for founders. I am Liu Xiaoxiao, an American lawyer, and I will provide you with an in-depth interpretation of the legal logic behind entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley.

China's notary office is like a detective agency. Their mission is to verify the correctness and authenticity of the notarization content and prevent conflicts and disputes before they occur. As the legal proverb says, "One more notary office means one less court." In China, the notary office is a department established by the state, just like the public security bureau, the procuratorate, the court, etc., but this is not the case in the United States.

In the United States, notary offices are all private institutions, and there are no special notary offices. They are all individual notaries, and notaries are often part-time postmen in the post office. People often go to the post office to notarize when they go to the post office to mail a letter. The price of notarization is also extremely low, usually $20 per person. The process is also very simple. It takes less than 5 minutes from entering the post office to exiting. 3 minutes of that is because Americans are inefficient. It takes 1 minute to swipe a credit card.

So the reason why American notarization is so casual is because of a different core principle:

In the United States, notaries only notarize the authenticity of the signature, and don't care about anything else.

In other words, you come to the notary office, take your ID, and the notary sees that the photo on it is the same as you. Then you pick up a pen and sign your name, and the notary's task is completed. No matter whether the document you brought is true or false, no matter whether the content you wrote is a terrorist organization against humanity, no matter whether you are scribbling on a piece of paper. As long as the notary sees that it is your signature, he will notarize it.

This has led to a major gap. What do we do most often when handling cross-border notarization?

The original and the copy are consistent, and the Chinese and English translations are consistent. This type of notarization is completely impossible to do in the United States, because American notaries will not read the content of the document, they are only responsible for checking whether the signature is the person himself.

Then you say, Lawyer Liu, I have done notarization in the United States to prove that the original and the copy are consistent in translation, why do you say it is not possible?

That kind of thing is a roundabout way to save the country. You need a practicing American lawyer

Are you talking about me?

Write a statement saying that I am an American lawyer, I have read these two documents, and I guarantee with my professional qualifications that the original and the copy are consistent. The attachment is the original and the copy.

Then the American lawyer signed in front of the notary. The notary still did not see whether the original and the copy were consistent, but only checked whether the lawyer's signature was signed by the person himself.

Surprised? Unexpected?

And let's not talk about the Chinese-English translation. The concept of original and copy is a different world, because under American law, in many cases, there is no difference between the original and the copy. We will talk about this next time.

Silicon Valley’s 42-chapter legal encyclopedia tailored for founders. I’m Liu Xiaoxiao, an American lawyer. See you next time.