Corrections are going to be much more a part of your Notary Loan Signing Agent career than your encounters with requests for backdating. Therefore, we want to clarify the difference between a correction and backdating to help enlighten the Notary community.
First and foremost, if you miss guiding a signer to sign in the correct spot or date a document (even if notarized) and you must obtain the signature or date at a later time- as long as the document was present and reviewed you are fine to have the signer sign and/or date for the date the document was between you both for the date that it originally appeared. The same thing applies if you have miss-dated a notarial certificate, forgot to stamp a document, or misspelled a name and you are asked to correct it. You may apply your corrections if allowed or requested. Corrections can only be applied to documents that existed between the notary and signers.
Now if you have a completely new document requesting a date in the past or future you absolutely may only date that document for the date your notarial certificate for the date the signer appears before you. Otherwise, that is backdating or postdating and just should not and can't be done. It is unethical and can cost you your Notary commission. Notaries will face requests for backdating and postdating documents throughout their term. It is not an uncommon request. Remember: the people or companies that ask you to do this are in some sort of need and although you may not be able to help them you should always decline them with care and concern. Never make people feel poorly about their request; however, you may educate them on your State laws (which is dangerous in all States).
There are no circumstances that a notary should ever backdate or postdate any document. If a document is already dated for a signer, however, the notary in most cases can still notarize the document by entering the date the signer appeared before them on their notarial certificate as long as the date for the signer matches or is a previous date. For instance, in Arizona, documents may be signed on the date they are issued or any date thereafter as long as the notary enters the date in their notarial certificate for the date the signer signed in front of them. Notaries may not notarize documents that have future dates printed for the signers.
REAL-LIFE EXAMPLE: We recently received a call on the notary line here at NotaryStars.com where one of our members did in-fact make a mistake on a Deed of Trust. She was more than willing to help fix it but something wasn't quite right. When she received a copy of the document for correction she realized that the Deed had actually changed. The vesting and signature line of the Deed of Trust had changed from John J. Star to John Joe Star. She also recognized that the document's bar code had been altered. It was twice the size of the bar code on the original documents.
This was a tricky case and our greatest minds came together to help the notary make the decision not to correct the new version of the document. We advised the notary obtaining the missing signature and date would be okay; however, if she executed the Notarial Certificate for a new document that would be backdating. We further advised her to let the Title Agency and Signing Agency she would only be able to apply corrections to the original Deed of Trust that appeared between her and the signers. That could have either been a fresh copy of the original copy as long as it was identical. (REPRINT IS YOUR BEST OPTION IF YOU HAVEN'T DELETED THE DOCUMENTS YET).
This was a bit stressful for the notary but we helped her compose her email to the Title Agency and Signing Company explaining politely her position and they digressed.