A power of attorney drafted abroad arrives with English down one side of the page and Spanish down the other. The client needs it notarized and apostilled so a relative or lawyer overseas can act for them.
The notarization itself is quick. What decides whether the document survives is the paragraph that mentions the notary, and it was written by someone who has never worked with a California notary public.
First, what a notary here is actually doing
A power of attorney is a private document, not a government record. Nobody issues it and no agency certifies it. So the only public signature on it is the notary’s, and that is what the California Secretary of State authenticates when it issues the apostille.
Our part is narrow. We confirm the identity of the person signing, and we take their acknowledgment of the signature. We are not approving the powers being granted, and on a bilingual document we are not certifying that the Spanish says the same thing as the English. What the signer chooses to sign is theirs.
Getting that boundary wrong is where these documents fail.
The paragraph that names the notary
Foreign drafters often write the notary into the text of the document. Sometimes that is fine. Sometimes it describes a public officer we are not.
In many Spanish-speaking countries a notario público is a different creature entirely: a legally trained official with far broader authority than a notary public in California, and expensive to see. A California notary public cannot act in that role, and California law is strict about the distinction. Government Code section 8219.5 prohibits a notary here from using the literal translation “notario” or “notario público,” on penalty of suspension or loss of the commission.
A document we handled recently did it correctly. The text set out, in full, that the person notarizing would be a notary public of the County of Los Angeles, State of California, United States of America, and left a blank for the name. That is an accurate description of what we are, so there was nothing to object to. It was signed, we notarized it, and it went for its apostille.
The version that causes trouble is the one where the Spanish text calls the notary something else, or has the notary state or guarantee things about the document itself. A notary asked to make representations inside the body of a document — or to sign it anywhere other than the notarial certificate — should stop and read very carefully. It may be something we are not permitted to do at all.
The certificate at the end
The second failure is more common and easier to miss.
A power of attorney drafted in another state or another country usually arrives with its own wording for the notary block: a line for a stamp, a line for a signature, some phrasing the drafter is used to. It is almost never the wording California requires.
California notaries take acknowledgments in a form set by state law, word for word, including a specific disclaimer at the top of the certificate. The wording can be attached as a separate certificate or built into the document itself — often as its own page — but the exact California language has to be there when the document goes for its apostille.
Most notaries here spot a foreign notary block immediately, because the correct format is drilled into you to get the commission. We check the document before the appointment, so this does not reach our clients. We have watched it reach other people at the counter, and staff at the Secretary of State have told us the same thing. That office issues California notary commissions in the first place, so it knows exactly what the certificate is supposed to say — and when a document arrives without it, the apostille is not issued.
Caught before signing, this is a two-minute correction. Caught after the document has travelled, it is a repeat of the whole trip.
What is, and is not, in our hands
We can make sure the notarization is one California will authenticate, and that the apostille is issued. We cannot promise the office abroad will be satisfied, and we do not pretend otherwise.
Those documents are usually drafted by a lawyer or notary in the destination country, who wants particular powers described in a particular way. Whether the wording does its job there is between the client and the people who drafted it. What we control is the part that happens here, and that part has to be right or the document never gets that far.
Before you sign anything
- Send us the document before the signing appointment, particularly if it was drafted outside California. The notarial certificate is the part to check.
- Ask the drafter whether they will accept the California acknowledgment wording, attached or built into the document, since that is the form we can lawfully use.
- If the document describes the notary, read that passage. It has to describe a notary public, not a civil-law notary.
- Decide what the Spanish text says before you sign it. Our notarization says nothing about the translation.
If you are working to a date abroad, build in time for a document to come back for correction.
This article is part of When an Apostille Is Refused, where we cover what actually went wrong and how each problem is recovered.
Also in this section: Why the Secretary of State May Refuse Your Documents, Why Some Documents Should NOT Be Notarized First and Moving to Spain: Two Documents, Two Different Paths.