What to ask your notary when adopting

[profnot]

Hi, All

I am a notary who does lots of adoption work for couples adopting babies in foreign countries. Notarizing these documents is very, very tricky. Most notaries do not handle them correctly.

Many of my new clients tell me they are the third or fourth notary they tried. Frequently, the notaries are employees of our county's hospital. (Yikes!) Documents notarized by my predessors were rejected by the foreign government agencies as being incorrectly peformed.

I have never had one of my notarized documents rejected.

I live in the rural area of the Pacific Northwest so I am not posting this info to get work.

Here is what you should ask your prospective notary:
*Have you notarized documents which went to foreign countries after it left your hands?
*Have any of your notarizations been refused by anyone for lack of perfect work?
*Can you provide me with the names and phone numbers of happy clients using you for foreign-baby adoption work? If the notary wants to call you back to provide this info, she is probably OK. She needs time to ask her clients for permission. If you don't get a call back within 2 business days, seek another notary.

Good luck!

[stacyf]

Those are some great tips profnot! I am finishing my dossier for Colombia and I haven't had any trouble yet with my notary. We do still need to get them appostilled so I imagine I will find out then if all the notarizations are okay.