Providing low-cost notary public services for clients across Sydney and beyond.
Witnessing Documents
If you’re signing documents in Australia but sending those documents to another country, you must sign those documents in the presence of a notary public in Australia.
The notary will verify the identity of the person signing and can notarise the document after witnessing that person sign the document in the notary’s presence. The person signing must be able to satisfactorily prove their identity to the notary before signing. The person signing must also physically sign in the notary’s presence – they cannot sign ‘online’ or elsewhere.
Certifying Documents
If you’re sending copies of Australian documents to another country, those documents must be certified by a notary public in Australia.
The notary can notarise a copy of your document by certifying that it’s a ‘true copy of the original document’. The notary may need to verify your document with whoever issued it. If your document was not issued in Australia, it should be notarised in the country where it was issued – not notarised in Australia.
Document Verification
Official Australian Government documents (ie, certificates with various authenticity and security features that are easily identifiable as original and genuine) can be attested without additional verification. Australian education documents (ie, testamurs and transcripts) must be verified with the education institution that issued them.
Apostille and Authentication Services
Different intended destination countries have different document requirements. In most cases, the basic requirement is for your document to be notarised, but after that, any further attestation depends on the destination country.
Usually, countries that are members of the Apostille Convention will accept notarised documents and other public documents stamped with an apostille.
Countries that are not members of the Apostille Convention usually only accept documents after they have been authenticated by the DFAT and legalised by their foreign representative office.
We provide apostille services and DFAT authentication services, and service a number of foreign representative offices to legalise documents.