Crossbows LLP | Notarial & Commissioning Services

You don't need to but in certain circumstances, you may be required to do so by the party in the other jurisdiction.

Parties in other countries may not have  any knowledge that the document you have produced to them has been validly executed or if it is a true copy of the original.

The process of Notarizing documents removes any doubts as to validity and/or authenticity.

If you are not required to provide a chain of authentication, ie, authentication by the Singapore Academy of Law, verification by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and legalisation by embassy, you can expect the document along with the Notarial Certificate to be ready within half an hour.

If a complete chain of authentication is required, this can take about 7 working days.

Please do bear in mind that we have no control over the external agencies mentioned and our estimation is just that - an estimation.

If you are required to sign the document in the presence of a Notary, then you must be present at the office. Our Notary cannot witness your signature if you have not signed the document before him.

No, Notarial fees are prescribed by law and are not negotiable. Notaries are in fact not allowed to give discounts.

That depends.

If you have been asked to sign a document before a Notary Public as a witness, apart from the document, bring along your identification document, which could be your identity card or your passport.

If you have been asked to have your documents certified as true copies of the originals by a Notary, bring along the original documents and your identification document.

It makes complete sense to have only 1 Notarial Certificate even if you have multiple documents, provided that these are prepared to be given to just 1 foreign based entity. This will save you considerable costs.

Unfortunately, if the foreign based entity requires a Notarial Certificate for each document, or if you are required to submit documents to different entities or if the embassy requires separate certificates, then you may have no choice but to have a certificate for each document.

Read about apostille and what this means here.

As highlighted, Notaries in Singapore do not issue apostilles and the only way to get your document authenticated and legalized is through the chain of authentication process as explained here.

If you mean certify a copy to be a true copy of the original even though the original is not in the English language, yes we can. Please do produce the original at the appointment.

Guidelines issued by the Singapore Academy of Law states that a Notary can do so as he/she is witnessing and attesting to the identity of the signature and not the validity of the contents of the document.

However, the guidelines further provide that it would be prudent for a Notary to only witness a such a document when there is an English equivalent of the document translated by an official interpreter and the deponent, ie, you, sign both documents, ie, the document in the foreign language and the English translation. So Yes, it is possible but subject to the Notary's discretion and his request for a translation before he witnesses the execution of the document.

We can only certify that the document is a true copy of the original certified true copy. We cannot certify that the copy is a true copy of the original if the original has not been produced to the Notary.

Yes, you certainly can and if you decide to do so, you would be saving yourself service costs but you will need to pay the charges imposed by the agencies mentioned, directly to them. For SAL, this would be $42.80 and for MFA, this would be $10. As for the Embassy, the fees vary between embassies and you would need to check with the embassy at which you need to get your documents legalised. You can also get us to do the legwork for you for a service fee - please call or email us with your requirements and we will give you a quote.