A great deal of the articles we bring to you are real life examples we either deal with at Notary Stars or at Unlimited Ink Notary (our sister company/signing agency). We start this article off this way because sometimes the titles may not seem to apply to you, but this particular scenario could happen to anyone going through renewal and we want you to know how to deal with it. With that said, we want you to know that just because someone, even your Secretary of State, tells you that you can do something that you have to think ahead and ask the what if's. Especially if you are a Loan Signing Agent because working with Loan Transactions often depend on what a lenders underwriters (or attorney's) will accept. This particular case came out of New York. We had a Notary who accepted a Signing in SigningOrder.com as usual. Her Notary Commission was showing up to date because she manually changed the date in Signing Order, even though she hadn't physically received her Notary Commission via mail yet. DO NOT DO THAT AS IT MAY LAND YOU IN HOT WATER. Always wait until you have your physical commission in hand to update any of the websites you are listed on. Now, she had applied for her renewal two months in advance, but her expiration date came and went, and the new commission didn't arrive. When we assigned her the signing, she was 4 days past her commission date expiration. Now someone at the Secretary of State's office told her that she could just strike through the commission date on the Notary Stamp and write her new expiration date. We all also know that our stamps expiration date is inspected prior to closing but she can't get a new stamp from anyone without her physical commission. No stamp maker is going to make one for a Notary until they have that and can verify it. This just happened to be a late Thursday evening, scan and ship, signing that was closing on a Monday (end of Month). The buyers would not be able to resign and could lose money if they didn't sign on time. The package was flawless except for the strike throughs on the commission date in her Notary stamp. Our scan back team caught it but the damage was done. The Notary signed the entire package with two people who were going in two different directions and wouldn't be able to resign again together- and then it was up to Unlimited Ink Notary and the Title Company to sort things out. The wait time to speak to anyone at the New York Secretary of State that day was 192 minutes. And we started working on this around 9 am PST, meaning that it was already 12 pm EST. The lenders are also located on the East Coast, and we all know if they can't fund right away, they may not get to fund. The Notary was in absolute heart break as she thought she was doing a good thing. She also didn't understand why they wouldn't accept it since she was told by her Secretary of State that she could do this... and that would be fine if she had proof at all. Why would a lender allow $500,000+ dollars to exit their account if they could run the risk that the Notary would be denied their commission for any reason at all? Again, there was no proof she would actually be able to get her commission as it was in process. Luckly, we had just presented the New York Notary Alliance at Notary Stars Unlimited the same month and we had someone we could reach out to verify the New York processes with. New York is currently 4-8 months behind in processing Notary Commissions. However, we were told that the Notary if applying in person can get an official letter head to prove they can notarize. When we spoke with the Notary on this advice, she did have an email that did tell her she was going to get her commission and what date to use but an email isn't good enough. She had to drive about 30-45 minutes to her local office (which isn't a luxury for most) and ask them to write this letter and sign it. Now, here's what we want you to know if you are in between for commission renewal. 1) Do not update any commission expiration dates until you have your commission in hand, or valid proof that you are indeed approved (official letter head from your Secretary of States Office and not just an email). If your State doesn't offer that, please don't risk it! 2) If you have physical letter head proof that you are renewing your stamp then you need to let your assigning parties know BEFORE you process any transactions as a Loan Signing Agent. This is because the lender you are working for may not accept a stamp like this. If this lender hadn't been willing to make an exception, we don't even want to know what could have happened to the Notary.* 3) For general Notary work you also need to explain to your clients before you charge them and put them through this kind of stress what could happen and allow them to decide if they want to take that chance. More than likely a large bank would not accept a Power of Attorney like this. *In this particular instance we made it through closing with the letterhead but if for any reason she doesn't actually get her commission, and anything goes wrong- she actually could get sued and that wouldn't be good as Errors and Omissions insurance only covers you for Notarial Acts when you are allowed to preform them. Remember, all Insurance companies are just that, insurance companies. This means, they aren't your friend, and they don't have your back if you make a mistake like this. So, the moral of this story is if your State takes a long time to process renewals but allows you to continue to Notarize you need to make sure you have physical proof readily available, on hand, and talk with your clients ahead of time.
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