The WAY to WOW Shows
Changes in the Notary Industry
June 24, 2024
Automatically generated from YouTube captions; names and wording may contain errors.

[0:00] States weekly I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Monday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time and uh just you know go an hour by hour across the country until you end up at uh what 1 pm on the East Coast we talk about all things related to probate trusts Estates both from the standpoint of our personal estate planning as well as the administration of a probate or the administration of a trust and uh so today I'm I'm very pleased to introduce

[0:36] to you my guest Suzanne fineberg this is a first for our show because Suzanne is a notary public and this this is a I think a much misunderstood profession um although it remains crucial to so much of both Estate Planning and estate ad Administration and so you know without further Ado um I I want to introduce Suzanne thank you so much for coming on the show thank you so much Kevin I'm

[1:11] really pleased to be here and um it's like you said it's a profession so I'm not your mother's notary I don't do car titles although I can um and the the profession has changed so much especially since covid but it actually started changing back in 2006 so um your your old notary used to be at a bank they used to be um in a law law office or they were um working in a corporation um there were independent notaries that did loan signings in title companies so

[1:47] nowadays we're different before we get into the changes that the and and and by the way I remember this is in what I jokingly call Kevin 1.0 when I had a commercial real estate company at at the time I was I was a notary public as well because it was so easy you know to become a notary public my mother was a notary republic as well but you know I I I found that it's become um much more difficult the standards are much higher um so but before we get into some of the changes that have been going on the last 20 25 years tell us real

[2:23] quickly what a notary public does because this I think there's a lot of confusion um you know people say oh I'm gonna I have to get my document notorized right but what what does a notary public do what is their function okay so we have several functions the first function is to identify the signer as being they are the person who they say they are so we do that through ID verification in person or online depending on how the notorized certificate and an acknowledgement says that I've checked

[2:59] your ID and you are who you say you are and I'm going to sign sign this I don't have anything to do with the contents of your document except making sure that my name is not in your document and then the third thing that we do is it called a jurat or an oath so we administer an oath and you you swear or affirm I do so swear or I do so affirm that the contents of this document are true and correct so sometimes we attach that to an affidavit sometimes it's you know in its own certificate every state has those three has um and there's a copy

[3:34] certificate as well which is only for manual notorized in front of you I make the copy and I certify that it's a copy there's also in Arizona something called a tangible copy of a downloaded record so um that's that's a new thing here in Arizona but um so that's basically what we do we identify who you are and we either take an oath or we sign a document that says we checked your ID okay so so basically there's the acknowledgement and there's the jurat the jurat being the oath so when someone says well you need to get this document

[4:11] notorized how do you know which one you know is being required that's a trick question so um I didn't mean it to that's okay as a notary I am not allowed to give legal advice and telling the signer which certificate to use is considered legal advice so we always tell the signer ask your attorney or call the Secretary of State or get advice from the person that gave you the document as to which to use now we will get documents from attorneys that's that don't have anything with it and we'll ask them what they want and we have to Define it for the attorney because a lot

[4:48] of times attorneys just will download something and just stick it into a document and it may not be correct and we have to we're only allowed to correct the not notary certificate we can't do anything to your document okay so so so best to go to really The Source or the person who's saying you have to get this notorized to say what kind of notorized [Laughter]

[5:29] that's correct we do that a lot so we are a white glove service so when we work with when we work with attorneys clients when we work with things we also do a lot of the leg work for the client and then the attorney can then give that information to the client and um you know again I have a long list of reference uh referral numbers for people to um to call or contact for that type of information the big problem arises not even so much from attorney firms but when people download their own documents so they download their documents and they might download it from a California

[6:05] site but they're actually signing it in Arizona so the notarial certificate that came with the document may or may not be correct so you have course States there's another problem another trick question what happens when you're in one state and the notary is in a different state and you're doing it online so what happens then is I then say to you it's valid in all 50 States that's not a problem but you have to go to the recipient of the document the court or the company the insurance claim whatever it is that you're doing and you have to say I'm GNA have this done remotely is

[6:41] that acceptable or you can say I'm having I'm I'm on vacation in Arizona can an Arizona notary notorized the document for me and I will send it to you from Arizona so it's really important and we tell people this all the time you it's ex it's valid but it's not necessarily accepted it's more accepted now than it's ever been oh and oh so that I mean that's a great point because I remember um I was handling a case in Alabama right and and documents the people involved were in a

[7:17] different state and so one of the things the attorney and I were dealing with pretty consistently was okay so you know what what kind of notorized will the court accept you know this verbage from this state or whatever um and and it it can get a little bit tricky at times it seems so it's so how what do you advise people in terms of when you have these these cross state situations should they you know uh get the the the form that the um the form of

[7:54] the jurat for example that the notary will use and submit that for preapproval or or how can they handle that that situation well a lot of times they'll whether they have the um certificate or not whether it's the right certificate or not a lot of times they'll say I don't have a certificate but I know I need an acknowledgement or I know I need an oath Jette and I'll say not a problem I have an Arizona one and I'll just attach it to the document okay so we will attach it to the document we carry those with us some notaries charge $10 for it which yes to

[8:29] to attach the certificate because it's really it's it's the same thing as if you went to Staples and you bought one oh I see right so you know that's so as a notary you're only allowed to charge what the state allows and the state only allows a certain amount of money so here in Arizona it's $10 per certificate or notarial act um in other states it might be $25 it might be $3 so wherever the notary is that's what they can charge for the document so they're going to try to make their money up in a different way gotcha oh interesting yeah now um

[9:07] you're based in Arizona as you've noted um but you can do notorized someone in um you know Michigan could contact you to to notorized a document that they need for something in Michigan how would something like that work so basically as a notary as remote online notary we can notorized as long as our feet are in the state of Arizona anywhere in the world anywhere

[9:43] in the universe right now there's two people stuck on the space station if they needed something notorized and they had the right equipment NASA could put them in touch with us and we could notorized it wow thetically theoretically we do advertise that we can notorized anywhere in the world or the universe so I was watching the news those two guy the the woman and the man are stuck up there on the space station and I was thinking suppose they're closing on a house and then were counting on being home you know what would they do yeah well that I you know actually that is quite fast because it could happen right

[10:19] and it's you know as time goes by and and space travel becomes you know more more common right you you could have a situation like that where you would you could theoretically you can't do it unless you're going through um NASA so you know there's a whole background check and there's all these things that make it not just oh Suzanne had a great idea I'm gonna actually try to get on the space station well I have the requirements to do business on the space station and it's not easy oh okay yeah and with the delays it's like a 1.2 second 1.26 second delay in the

[10:54] communications so some platforms won't even work for doing the online notarization but so now you talk about the world anywhere in the world so you have two types of people that are located overseas one would be a US citizen that's an expat that's on work that's on vacation for some reason or other they are in Europe they are in Asia they are in South America or Antarctica wherever it is they are the North Pole looking at the polar bears wherever it is they are I can do their notorized

[11:29] for the internet okay now there's a second type of person that type of person is a foreign citizen okay in Arizona we can't notorized foreign citizens so I have contract notaries located in a couple of States like Montana and Florida that allow for a foreign passport or biometric identification so I'll get a phone call from somebody um that's a Chinese citizen in either the United States or in uh in China and they don't have a US driver's license they don't have a US passport and they don't have five years

[12:05] of History here in America so how did the notarization get done I call my notary in Montana she takes care of the notarization for me she can do online app a deals at the same time if that's required and then it goes right to that person on the internet same day so okay yeah oh that that's interesting I just assume that as long as some one was you know in the US you know they could go to a notary and and and and have the you know notary notorized the document but depends on the state depends on the state and the laws in the state they're

[12:41] very different you think they'd be uniform there are uniform acts that are um not demonstration acts I can't think of the word but where you have like a a sample legislative act yeah yeah and then you know a lot of states use that Arizona uses only some of it although they have adopted uh was just reading um in the legislature that a couple years ago they adopted the uniform act but we don't have everything that's in the uniform act right so there's a uniform probate code which was written I've talked about it on this show a few times I think it was written back I want to say in the mid to late 60s and I think

[13:17] roughly 30 or 35 states have have you know um adopted all or part of it um but it is by no means as you noted Universal um I I don't know that it it deals with notary issues though right so there's um there's probate um there probate laws and um in Arizona um they've just updated it to it used to be you could have electronic signatures but you had to be in person so with noorizadeh

[13:59] the signer and we do the noorizadeh and maybe the lawyer sitting in um all on audiovisual communication and the

[14:35] document is there and the notary watches the person signed the document and then the notary notorized the document and so you've got that so Wills up to the point that um they just revised the the rules that were active as of um June of this year um they would could only do electronic signatures on a tablet they couldn't do remote like I couldn't do your will but I could go go out to LA and do it that way now you talk about wills and electronic notarization so there's only as of 2023 there were 13 states that allowed for electronic

[15:13] notorized when you are in Kentucky and you hire me to do the notarization for your clients who are located your clients are all over because you're a huge Law Firm estate planning Law Firm or a wealth planning firm so what happens is is there something where and again I'm not a lawyer this isn't legal advice or anything this is what I see on the internet right and I fact checked it so I'll say it um there is something where um a person can do a will in Arizona even though they reside in Kentucky or

[15:48] some other state as long as the will they're doing in Arizona meets the requirements of probate in Kentucky and then Kentucky can re the Probate Court can can recognize that will but if you're doing a will in any of four states Arizona Florida Nevada and Indiana there's something called a custodial account and qualified custodian so you can't do and store your own last will and testament you have to have a c qualified custodian and it has to go into an account we have become qualified custodians in Florida I have a

[16:24] partner in Florida they do the business they they're the qualified custodian for Florida um probate uh work and then I do the work for Nevada Arizona and Indiana because that's not State specific it I can use my Arizona qualifications for that and a whole bunch of stuff goes into the file um the audit Trails copies of the driver's licenses or the IDS everything that you would think would be important to it now what happens is we charge an annual fee for storing that document for you and if you want to have a copy of that document for your records

[17:00] we give you a watermark copy that says for reference purposes only not a valid you know not a valid document got it yeah interesting wow yeah so it gets very complicated with that yeah sure sure does so so that you you you sort started going into my next question which is in the state planning and a state Administration area what are the documents that you will typic that typically will require um notor so you mentioned a will what other types of

[17:36] documents there 11 and 12 documents that are usually in an estate plan and just a little aside um I love doing mobile estate plans because a lot of attorneys want doubles so it's twice the amount of money online we do it once and it's like they could use it as many times as they want so we actually lose money online but it's much more efficient for the lawyer and much less costly for the lawyer and we want clients coming back to us so that's not a problem but you have your last will in Testament you have your um your um Power uh durable power of attorney which is for finance

[18:11] you have your healthc care power of attorney you have a mental health power of attorney you've got um you've got a um what do you call you can have a living will you can have end of life documents um there's a trust if somebody has a trust and there's a certificate of trust and those get notorized and then any amendments get notorized you know if you amending everything they get notorized because we do a lot of amendment type work where there's only three or four documents that just have to be notorized and added to the to the pile okay and but but you can go to any

[18:46] uh of the Attorney General's I think usually it's the Attorney General's office that has the uh senior documents for seniors to look at or you can go online and download or you could go to an attorney like yourself and you know they will tell you what you need um we use different types of people so we will use a doc preparer here in Arizona they're allowed to be in practice for themselves as long as they're attached to a firm and so we personally use a doc preparer and because she's less expensive than a than the law firm I recommend that to a lot of my clients who don't need the big powerful trust

[19:22] then you have the um then you have the estate planning lawyers like like your friend Paul um daughter is that how you pronounce his last name rabet no oh doy oh Paul Doty oh right you know we'll send somebody to that or to um oh I can't think of her Marjorie Desmond um here in Fountain Hills so we have a whole list of lawyers that we do B that refer business to us and we refer business back so we try to have like a try level of what the person needs we do a lot of we work with a lot of wealth planners that have estate plans that they have that are more um templated

[19:59] type of thing so it's easier for us because it's always the same template that we're using maybe there's 10 pages instead of five pages but it's always the same places to sign and the same choices to pick off it's very difficult doing things online compared to in person because you have to pre um pre- tag the documents and so depending on the remote online platform you use you know and you have like choices like do you want the autopsy do you want to say you want an autopsy does the doctor make the decision does the state make the decision you know do the you know and then so you have to choose like choose

[20:35] item one two or three and within one two or three you have to choose a b or c so everything has to be pre-done as a notary we can't sign we can't notorized a document with blanks so to make it easier for ourselves we require everything is filled in in advance and then as we do the the notorized the person when we get to that section this is the section where you have to make a choice and those are your choices do you approve of the choice that you signed and we do that just to protect ourselves and to protect the person because they're actually initialing it or choosing yes or or no or whatever in

[21:10] advance so we want to make sure that yes this is what they wanted to do because if they don't we'll make the change for them oh okay yeah so in that in that case it would be something like a um healthc care uh yeah like a healthcare power of attorney where um where you want to uh you don't want or or do not resuscitate or resuscitate or only resuscitate under these conditions whatever little story my husband had surgery um heart surgery uh this past summer and you know he has a DNR but

[21:45] that's like only for like really bad cases and I said he has a DNR but he's too young to do the DNR he don't worry with heart surgery we resuscitate them anyway because we stop their heart oh okay you know you can have the DNR you can have those instructions and you can change them verbally with a witness when you're in the H not legal advice but right so I by by the way I do need to change one thing I'm not a lawyer I'm a professional fiduciary so okay yeah so I I ad I administrate Estates but uh I don't I don't create estate plans I work I work with a lot of lawyers which uh um

[22:22] so in that respect we have kind of similar practices right um so um when you're um working with someone um on you know essentially completing their estate plan because right typically right it's it's already drawn up at the point we call it executing the plan executing the documents okay executing the documents or executing the plan right so um what do you find to be the the most

[22:57] important um added value that you bring to that process so it's very different we like working with attorneys because we can actually um brand ourselves as be very transparent to the client um as as the notary we don't hand them our card or anything we tell them if there's a problem they can get back with the attorney we we have we every attorney we work with has to be available or have a paralal available for us when we're in ass signing so that if there's a question we don't have to

[23:33] sit and wait for the answer because it costs a lot of money to be online and do a um remote online notorized to be in there whatever the lawyer wants we add this white glove sort of uh Gentle Touch to everything we make sure your client is comfortable if if you say you want your client to do remote online notorized in my conversation with your client that they can't even like call me on a cell phone or they have problems with technology we'll say we'll drive the 90 miles you know and do it in person for you so we we try to match the

[24:11] technology to I have three or four platforms that we use and I can just tell from talking to you what platform is going to work best with you so we offer a choice we carry a big overhead load on platforms so that I can offer that choice and offer the support um we even will set you if you're a law firm or a financial planning firm and you have your own notaries in house I can set you up on the right platform for you to use I can train you and we do that as well we add that service so even if you're just doing business with me and you're going to do ongoing business with your clients with me online we will

[24:47] train you on what to get for us to make it go easier and um yeah so we do a lot of training um ahead of time and a lot of communication you know most notaries they get online and they go stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp you know sign and people don't realize that to make it easier for the notary the notary will sometimes choose an option that says sign everything at one time okay you don't know that the person's read that so we have a script that a legal script that we have to read here in Arizona and it's we can as long as it touches those point it can be

[25:23] however we want to ver verbalize it but we we ask them very specifically have you reviewed your documents and do you understand what you're signing and they'll say Yes And even with them saying yes we make them sign each page individually and we say this is your power of attorney this is your last will in Testament we say to the witness I need you to sign now and you're going to click on the button we walk you through I mean it's a tremendous process people don't really realize how difficult it is they think oh I'm going to click some buttons I'm gonna have a zoom call and it's done Zoom is not the way to do it

[25:59] we we use a closed conferencing system from Vonage um which our platforms use and so there's no way of hacking into it per se and flood is a big issue but not when you do it correctly interesting so um you raised another question um in my mind just a moment ago when you were talking about the process so how as as a notary you're essentially verifying the identity of the person at one level or another how do you deal with the issue of the

[26:35] competency of the person side that's that's a very good question so in Florida there are specific rules about competency and um about um sensitive signers and there's there's a word that they use in Florida and you forgive me if I'm having a moment here but um there's a whole series of questions you have to ask one of the things I do is I ask the person to turn the camera oh okay so that I can see there's nobody in the room with a gun to their head okay oh wow a lot of notaries don't do that I do that um I

[27:11] have a conversation with the person if the person is not talking to me clearly one of the questions I ask them is have you been on any medication in the last 24 hours or have you had a drink or smoked you know a drug or taken a drug and recreational drug and and a lot of times they'll Sayes I just took um I just took a Valium and I'll say well you know what let's reschedule this for when you're calmer and when you can understand what's going on so you've got to really be able to to notice I've noticed that I have a much harder time with people in

[27:47] hospitals in person and their families standing there than I do when they're online so you know usually the family is right there they won't what we did a lot of covid work we decided be brave and get all dressed up and go in and do the covid work and um we had a whole covid setup for people's garages and for in the hospital and everything and it was a very tense situation and people wanted things to get done and they were doing it fast and the person in the bed really didn't want it done that way and you could tell they were uncomfortable with it I just a notarization in person for

[28:23] my neighbor who has a disabled child uh adult child and she didn't want to sign the document and I said to the mother I said I can't notor the document until Liz says to me she's ready to sign it no matter what you need and it was for they had to get it back it was for some sort of a um um some sort of a probate issue because the will the the the trust was written wrong and they wanted to break the trust and it had everything had to be notorized and this poor young woman didn't want to break the trust because she felt that the new trust wasn't good

[28:59] for her and so you know you have to you have to use common sense and um but you get back to a point that's very important for ID so there's three things involved in an ID either you have biometric verification okay which is good in Florida and mantana and a couple of other states and then every other state requires at least two things one is a knowledge-based authentication quiz and you have to answer this is online you have to answer five question questions you can get four of them correct if you don't you have a second chance to do it if not you have to wait 24 hours before

[29:35] you can do it online again and after that you then have to do your ID verification of your credential on your cell phone and you're holding it up and you're taking a picture and a lot of times it doesn't communicate well and it's the most frustrating part of the notorized know what this isn't going to work for me just tell me what you're going to charge me to come out to my house and I go well you're in Texas I'm here out to your house for you airfare will be right wow um so um and and we're we're

[30:13] we're actually um running running out of time but um um one one last question and and that is um how much um advanced notice should someone plan on when they know they need to execute a set of estate planning documents you know can they can they you know call you at you know or get in touch with you at 9:00 am and expect you know to have service by you know noon or what what you know how does that that work so first of all that's called a rush charge to do it the same day so we get

[30:50] paid in advance and we also if it's the same day within four hours uh it have to have a 4 hour minimum it' be a rush charge however our policy is 24 hours in advance to pay and 24 hours in advance for the documents to get to us so that we can then prep them now if you're going to if I'm going to your house I need to know am I picking those documents up at the lawyer's office am I dropping them back off am I mailing them somewhere am I leaving them with the client am I making copies and then bringing it back to the lawyer or to the you know what am I doing with those things that determines how much Advanced

[31:25] time but usually if somebody calls me up at 9 or 10:00 in the morning I can have the notarization done by 4 in the afternoon the next afternoon or I usually like to to do two or three days I like to schedule two or three days out if I can only because this changes I will get everything tagged and the lawyer or the financial planner or somebody will call me up and say you know what I've made this change and then I have to take everything down and I have to redo everything and whatnot and yeah yeah again change charge because

[32:00] it's not an easy thing to do you know it looks easy but it really you know part part of the thing we do is a quality review so we we quality review the documents before we even upload them so that if we have any questions or any changes that have to be made they're made and resent to us and then we do a quality review at the end to make sure that we've hit every item that has to be hit in the documents so if it's a document like um a healthcare power attorne Journey it has a lot of choices what I'll do is I'll make a physical copy and I'll highlight everything that has to be looked at or signed on that

[32:35] document so that as I'm going through I don't miss anything again most notaries don't do that I do that because I want to make sure it's right the first time I don't want a client calling the lawyer back and saying hey I don't want to work with that person again you know she doesn't know what she's doing I want I want clients your clients other lawyer uh other financial planner clients other uh lawyers paralegals doc uh prep people to know that we have your clients interests as our interest whether they're paying us or you're paying us well this this certainly is not as

[33:12] you started out by saying your your father's notary service it's very very different like like I said I I was a notary public many you know decades ago and and in the days where you only did wet signatures all that kind of stuff and uh it's it this it's so different now I I really appreciate you bringing me up to date bringing all of us up today it's it's it's really uh so much more information about this process than I think most people realize excuse me and um so you know I think unfortunately

[33:49] we're gonna have to um you know one more thing real quickly and that is you don't want to just call up any notary you want to make sure that not understands how to do an estate doc how to do estate documents that is so important that they have that experience okay good good a good tip to end on yeah so um you know Suzanne thank you so much for coming on the show today and and really helping educate all of us on what is really a crucial part of the whole Estate Planning and estate Administration process because if the

[34:24] estate plan isn't put together correctly all you have is chaos right in the administration process so so all of your points are very very well taken so thank thanks so much I'm just gonna do a brief wrap up and and we'll we'll chat offline yeah so folks that that is our show for today tomorrow at 10: am these are all pacific times is my show uh business lessons from the military we're going to be talking about Patton's rescue at the Battle of the bolds and what business lessons we can learn from

[35:01] this truly amazing military action taken by th for those of you who watched the show before one of my favorite military figures General George um s Paton Jr and then on uh Wednesday at 10: am I'm gonna be talking about one of my all-time favorite on the show people making money I'm going to be talking about one of my all-time favorite books on investing called a random walk on Wall Street this is a book that's been around for half a

[35:37] century now and its advice I think is as valuable today as it's ever been so hopefully you'll join me on Wednesday at 10: a. and again Pacific time for people making money and then uh a week from today um at uh 10:00 a.m. and and this is this is uh where a little of the confusion came on the show today um Suzanne mentioned my friend Paul so my guest next week is going to be Paul rabes who is an estate planning attorney

[36:12] in new uh in New Orleans in um in Louisiana and I confused it with a previous guest of mine um Paul Doty who's an estate planning attorney in in Scottdale so next week um uh Paul rabes will be talking about um I believe it's five of the most common misconceptions um in dealing with the administration of an estate um in Louisiana and and you may be saying well I don't live in Louisiana I I don't need to hear that Paul what Paul

[36:47] explains is applicable applicable Way Beyond the state of Louisiana and also you will get some um historic insight um into um the the probate and estate uh planning and administrative process so I invite you to tune in next Monday so um once again Suzanne thank you so much for coming on the show today really appreciate it great information for everybody and signing off as I always do wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and to my dear friend Marie you are my

[37:25] bell courage at all times my friends