Re: Analysis of Use cases for e-notarisations

["jmessing" <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

Let me make a first stab at a couple of use cases. Anyone else please feel free to jump in to add, correct, or comment.

1. Standard notarization for mortgage origination. Signer presents him/herself at a title company office to close a residential real estate transaction and is presented with a stack of papers several inches thick. Some need to be notarized, others just signed. The notarized documents generally relate to documents that will be recorded in a land office where they will be publicly accessible. These may include the deed to the property, a mortgage to secure the loan on the property, and/or a deed of trust in favor of the lender, which will secure the new loan of the buyer. A notary witnesses the signing, has the signer sign a little book containing all such witnessed transactions in consecutive order, and affixes his/her own signature and seal to the notarized documents. The documents are shipped off to their various destinations, with the notarized ones winding up in the public registry. When recording is completed, the loan is funded, the transaction closes, and life goes on.

2. Apostille. Let's say the buyer in the previous example dies and leaves the house to a foreign relative, a UK citizen, who wishes to sell his/her interest in it to another UK resident. The prospective purchaser of the property wants to be sure that the prior sale to the decedent was valid and in the course of doing his/her due diligence, seeks assurance that the notary involved in the previous sale transaction was a valid notary. By means of a procedure with the office of the Secretary of State of the jurisdiction where the house is located, a certification can be obtained that the notary was in fact a notary, that the signature of the notary is valid, and the seal is genuine. This is done by a person in the Secretary of State's office. A check is made of the signature and seal on file as against the ones appearing on the documents containing the signature and seal to be certified as valid. A check is also made of the effective date of the notary's commission. If all checks out properly, the certification is sent to England, the interest is transferred, and life again goes on.

In the second example, there was no in person contact with the notary initiated by the Secretary of State.

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From:         Nick Pope <pope@secstan.com>
Reply-To:     Nick Pope <pope@secstan.com>
Date:          Tue, 16 Mar 2004 22:41:53 -0000

>John and all in the enotary group.
>
>Following on from our meeting are tried to think further on what is required
>for analysing the requirements for e-notarisation and found myself heading
>off to the newly found planet Sedna.
>
>Anyway here goes:  What I believe is needed is something that considered the
>entities involved in use case of notarisation, their role in the different
>forms of authentication and how this would interface to the electronic
>domain.
>
>For example, is the document presented by the subject in electronic form?
>Is identity authentication done in non-electronic domain?  Does information
>concerning the identity authentication need to be represented in the
>electronic domain? ...........
>
>I attach a picture of the entities and authentications involved.  For an
>example use case can the work flow be identified?
>
>Hope this helps.
>
>Nick
>
>