Notary Training Available to University of Florida Employees

Bob Willits, Interim Director

The American Society of Notaries is offering notary public classes for Governor Bush’s Notary Education Section. University of Florida employees who currently serve as notaries may be interested in attending the class offered on November 3 from 8:30-11:30 a.m. at Santa Fe Community College, room W-230. A special government rate of $49 is available to university employees.

Participants will learn how to:

• Comply with important new law changes
• Provide notary services to persons with disabilities or language barriers
• Notarize a foreign language document
• Complete various types of new notary certificates
• Handle documents with no notary wording or with blank spaces
• Field requests for attested photocopies
• Avoid conflicts of interest
• Detect fraud and protect oneself from liability

Training programs for notaries, such as this one, are particularly important since laws do change. For instance, effective January 1, 1999, notaries in the state of Florida must update their bond amounts to $7,500 at renewal, comply with the new ID requirements and certificate wording, screen for signer competence, and submit proper records of name changes to Florida government

Departments who are interested in sending employees to this program should call the American Society of Notaries at 1-800-522-3392 or send e-mail to mail@notaries.org. Please be prepared to provide your fax number so that a registration form can be sent to you. Additional information about these training sessions is available on the web at http://www.state.fl.us/eog/notary_educate/seminar.htm.