An Open Letter to Notaries Everywhere

Let me begin by saying that, No, we did not make our end-of-July goal for the paperchase so that we'd have a chance at an August Court date... but we came DARNED CLOSE! We've been nagging, begging, pleading and making just plain annoyances of ourselves to everyone from whom we needed documents. At least it has felt that way to me. We probably weren't all that bad about it, but when you REALLY hate to ask others for things and hate to be an inconvenience to others (a big weakness of mine), paperchasing with a deadline isn't the most fun thing you can do.

Lisa, God bless her, has been running around all week like a maniac trying to run down documents, make sure they are notarized, getting county clerk of courts certifications that the notarizations are valid, and then getting apostiles. At $2 for certification of a notarization and then $5 for an apostile, we've spent hundreds more dollars this week. Wednesday she went to London to hand pick-up our Ohio Criminal Background checks from the BCIandI (faster than having them mailed) and also stoped by the Madison county courthouse to get the notaries certified. Then, on Thursday, we thought we had everything except the physicals. The physicals can go a little later than the other documents, so that wasn't the end of the world. Lisa ran downtown (where she ought to have her own parking space by now) to the Franklin County Courthouse and the office of the Secretary of State to get our last certifications and apostiles. We were planning to fax everything to our caseworker for pre-sending to Russia that night. We'd send the paper copies on Friday morning. We were going to make it. Court Dossier completed in 16 days! Yahoo!

At the Clerk of Courts office, Lisa learned that one of the notaries public (or is it notary publics... I can never remember) wasn't registered in Franklin County. Drats! Oh Well... not that big of a problem. We called the bank where the notary works and he indicated that he was registered in Fairfield County (the next county over). OK... we can handle that. So on Friday, Lisa drove to Lancaster (40 miles each way) to the Fairfield County Courthouse to get the certification for the notarization so that she could drive back to downtown Columbus to get the last apostile. We were still going to make it!... and then it blew up in our face.

It turns out that the notary WAS NOT registered in Fairfield County afterall... but he COULD HAVE BEEN. You see, he took his notary exam there (2 years ago). He was sent his notary packet from there that included his stamp... and that's where it all fell apart. The Clerk of Courts office explained that although the notary packet listed in AT LEAST FOUR PLACES that his notary was not valid until he returned the registration form, he never did so. He has been notarizing documents for two years, but his notary is technically not valid. KABOOM! August court date dreams blown away. We have to have the document re-issued and then notarized by a VALID notary public so it can be certified and apostiled. Hopefully we can do that on Monday and Tuesday, but it probably doesn't matter too much. It looks like we are relegated to an October court date despite our mad dash to do the court dossier in just 16 days. Oh how fun it is to know that we were just one invalid notary stamps away from making it.

Ahhh, the joys of the adoption process. Be prepared for some frustrations. We were pretty unhappy on Thursday and Friday. Now, it's just part of the process. Time to move forward and to remember that this will happen in God's time, not ours. Keep us (and our notary) in your prayers.