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Chapter 10: Handling Difficult or Uncommon

Notarial Situations

Certifying copies of passports, driver's licenses, and photos

References: 1 Tex. Admin. Code §87.50(a)

Notaries are sometimes asked to certify copies of passports, driver's licenses, and photographs of
individuals, for example to prove that the person in the photograph is, in fact, some particular person.
This is not an authorized duty of notaries.

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6/5/22, 9:49 PM Certifying copies of passports, driver's licenses, and photos

Usually these requests come from foreign countries in association with a passport application, college
application, or government form. When presented with such a request, you may politely decline to
perform the copy certification, or you may explain to the customer that an alternative method is for
the person in the photograph to make a written statement certifying that the photograph is a true
likeness of himself or herself, or that the copy of the passport (or driver's license) is a true copy of the
original, and then swear to the written statement in your presence.

Instruct the client first to check with the receiving agency to determine if this alternative method is
acceptable. If you are not a lawyer, do not help in preparing the statement for the customer or give
advice about what it should say (this would be construed as an unauthorized practice of law). Decline
to notarize if the customer does not understand what should be done.

Once the statement is written, offer the customer statutory samples of a jurat and an
acknowledgment certificate (if one is not included in the statement), and allow the signer to select one
of the two. After performing the verbal part of the notarial act, complete the notarial certificate and
attach it firmly to the document.

In this situation, you are not certifying a copy of the passport or the driver’s license or confirming the
identity of a person in a photo; rather, you are notarizing an affidavit that the document holder
prepared regarding those documents.

Below is an example of a statement prepared by a signer:

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Page 18 of 34

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