Yup. Unfortunately, this becoming a very commonly occurring issue. For those of you wondering “What is he mumbling about” I am talking about Notary stamps.

Just a few weeks ago, I had a Power of Attorney notarized in the bank by a Notary Public. After submission to the Lt. Governor’s office the document in my possession was rejected. Apparently the notary had added a middle initial to her stamp which wasn’t on file with the authentication office. So I had to find that notary again. Explain her the situation at hand. Convince her to re-notarize the document (which wasn’t as simple as it might sound) and get her to cross out the middle initial as well as put a signature next to the corrections. At this point the document did not look official at all. In fact it had an appearance of a paper on which the Notary was making sure there’s still ink on the stamp.

Of Course I was not happy about the results, however, at this point there was nothing left to do but to proceed with the authentication. (Sure, I could have resigned a new copy of the Power of Attorney, but it would still look just the same since the notary didn’t have another stamp without the middle initial. And there is no way I’d go to a different notary public since I can run into same issue there just as well) After “googling” the issue it became apparent that this is not something that happened only to me. (phew, what a relief) Obviously, people all over the Nation had a similar issue due to the very same problem: “An extra letter  or an absence of one” Curiously enough, there was also same case that occurred to someone in the United Kingdom while trying to legalize the document via an Apostille!

So if you authenticate documents often find a good Notary Public and stick with it!