THE HAGUE CONVENTION & the Apostille

The Notary Public will discuss with you whether an apostille is required on your document before it can be sent to the foreign jurisdiction. Set out below are more comprehensive details about the Apostille and its origins. The following is an extract from the Hague Conference on Private International Law:

OUTLINE – HAGUE APOSTILLE CONVENTION

Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents (“Apostille Convention”)

Purpose of the Convention

The Apostille Convention facilitates the circulation of public documents executed in one State party to the Convention and to be produced in another State party to the Convention. It does so by replacing the cumbersome and often costly formalities of a full legalisation process (chain certification) with the mere issuance of an Apostille (also called Apostille Certificate or Certificate). The Convention has also proven to be very useful for States that do not require foreign public documents to be legalised or that do not know the concept of legalisation in their domestic law: the citizens in these States enjoy the benefits of the Convention whenever they intend to produce a domestic public document in another State party which, for its part, requires authentication of the document concerned.

Public documents

The Convention applies only to public documents. These are documents emanating from an authority or official connected with a court or tribunal of the State (including documents issued by an administrative, constitutional or ecclesiastical court or tribunal, a public prosecutor, a clerk or a process-server); administrative documents; notarial acts [ by a Notary Public] ; and official certificates which are placed on documents signed by persons in their private capacity, such as official certificates recording the registration of a document or the fact that it was in existence on a certain date and official and notarial authentications of signatures. The main examples of public documents for which Apostilles are issued in practice include birth, marriage and death certificates; extracts from commercial registers and other registers; patents; court rulings; notarial acts and notarial attestations of signatures; academic diplomas issued by public institutions:etc. Apostilles may also be issued for a certified copy of a public document. On the other hand, the Convention neither applies to documents executed by diplomatic or consular agents nor to administrative documents dealing directly with commercial or customs operations (this latter exception is to be interpreted narrowly).

Who may issue an Apostille and how to verify the origin of an Apostille?

Apostilles may only be issued by a Competent Authority designated by the State from which the public document emanates. The Apostille is placed by the Competent Authority on the public document itself or on an allonge. The Apostille should conform as closely as possible to the Model annexed to the Convention. In addition, each Competent Authority is required to keep a Register in which it records the Apostilles it has issued. The Registers, which may be accessed by any interested person, are an essential tool to combat fraud and verify the origin of an Apostille in case of doubt.

The effects of an Apostille

The only effect of an Apostille is to certify the authenticity of the signature, the capacity in which the person signing the document has acted, and where appropriate, the identity of the seal or stamp which the document bears. The Apostille does not relate to the content of the underlying document itself (i.e., the apostillised public document).

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