Eric Clapton sang it best in 1970 After Midnight, We're gonna let it all hang out. After midnight, We're gonna chug-a-lug and shout We're gonna cause talk and suspicion Give an exhibition Find out what it is all about. You can be sure that I am not as talented or as well known as Eric Clapton, but this article sure might 'cause talk and suspicion' in the Notary community. We are going to delve into the issue of a loan signing appointment that spans the bewitching hour of 'Midnight' and what that means for your loan documents. We're going to try and 'find out what it is all about' in this article. I personally do not take loan signing appointments late at night but there are many NSA's who do. There just are times that a late appointment is the only time the signer is available and the lender/title company wants the documents signed on a particular date. Not tomorrow, not two days from now, but today! Dedicated to customer service, the perfect signing agent in you says, 'No problem. I can meet you at 11:30pm and we'll get your documents signed and notarized.' Sounds like a win-win situation until suddenly in the middle of the signing, you realize that the clock has struck midnight and your stamp is about to turn into a pumpkin. Now the date is the next day and you know that your hiring party will want a consistent dates on all the signature lines and notarizations must also be consistent throughout the package. But what can you do legally as a Notary to make all this come together seamlessly? We tapped a few resources to find the best way to handle this situation and still be within our regulatory statutes. Laura Biewer of CoachMeLaura.com advised to be prepared anytime you are in a late signing and think ahead to be prepared for any situation. She advises to plan on 'Doing all the notarized documents first so that they all bear the same date'. Good advice. And to be honest, we aren't concerned in this scenario what date the signer uses on their signature line except that we know the hiring party will likely reject a package that did not bear consistent dates throughout. So we probably should advise them to continue dating their signature with 'yesterday's' date. If you didn't forecast that the signing would go past the midnight hour and now you find yourself in a bit of a bind, Laura Biewer suggests that you continue the signing with the same date that you started the appointment with and just make a clear note in your journal. Now we are going to go down a rabbit hole...want to come along with Alice? What if it is a RON signing? Bill Bumphrey, NotaryStars.comRON instructor says, 'You could remedy that problem by pre-filling the dates so they were uniform throughout the entire document or use the "add text" feature (if available) to manually fill in the text during the session. The audit trail will show exactly when the documents were signed and notarized, so make sure to make that notation in your journal records.' And one last expert weighed in on this dilemma...Amy Seitz, Owner at CyberizeIt.com . Amy says that situation can occur even if you are not approaching the bewitching hour when you are notarizing for someone in another county. "The proper procedure is that the date reflects the time zone of the signers [Borrower & Notary]. So if my client were in tomorrow, their date/time stamp would be tomorrow (13th) but all of my date/time stamps would by for today (12th). The platform and audit report would reflect their exact location and time. The audit report would also reflect the difference in date/time and that would be the information that would stand up in court for compliance." In the end we learned to; - Be prepared for the possibility if the appointment is close to midnight and have a plan in place. - Best practice might be not to start a RON signing too close to the bewitching hour no matter where any of the participants are to keep those date/time stamps consistent. - Eric Clapton is still signing and Alice is still wandering down rabbit holes.
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