Purpose of a notary?
It seems here in The Philippines that notaries have no idea of their actual purpose and the laws they are to follow.
Every time I write some simple document that needs the signature notarized the notaries rewrite the entire document and add a lot of unnecessary or simply incorrect information. The job of a notary is simply to verify the identity of the person who is signing the document in the presence of the notary.
Why can't they just do that and leave the document writing to whoever needs the document? If I want to make a document selling you the
I needed a simple General Power of Attorney for my sister in
That exact document was what I gave to my mother when she was still alive and it served the need but when I needed a new one in my sisters name the notary here decided he needed to justify his fee and retyped the whole thing adding a lot of stuff I neither needed or wanted. A notary in the USA has a stamp with all his or her notarial license information on it and when the person signing has properly identified themselves they put the notarial seal on it, sign the stamp and record the transaction in the legal register,.
Here I once tried to get my wife's signature notarized on divorce papers and the notary said, "We don't have divorce in The Philippines so we don't notarize divorces." She did not even know that a foreigner can obtain a divorce abroad that is legal in The Philippines and that she was not notarizing a divorce, but only the signature. All notaries in The Philippines are lawyers (with the exception of members of Congress and certain other officials) and that is why the lack of legal knowledge is so appalling
I have posed that question in Yahoo Answers and it will be interesting to see what, if any replies I get. I welcome comments and or answers here.
