UT House Bill 25

In state enactments of remote notarization laws, the NNA has observed that in many cases policymakers have ignored in-person electronic notarization or equated the two. House Bill 25 does the latter when it defines “electronic notarization” as a remote notarization or any notarial act in an electronic format that may be recorded by a county recorder. But not only does House Bill 25 confusingly refer to a remote and an in-person electronic notarization by the same term, the new definition of “electronic notarization is problematic for another reason. It appears to limit — at least in the Notaries Public Reform Act — in-person electronic notarial acts to electronic real property documents and any other documents that are filed with a county recorder. In addition, House Bill 25 and the Notaries Public Reform Act nowhere explicitly authorize Notaries to perform in-person electronic notarial acts. Since 2000, the Utah Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) has authorized Notaries Public to use electronic signatures to perform notarial acts not only on real estate documents but in any “transaction” (UCA 46-4-103), but it indicates that in performing a notarial act on an electronic record, UCA 46-1-16(8) must be followed. That statute refers to a notarial certificate on an electronic message or document being complete without the Notary’s official seal if certain information, as specified, appears electronically within the message or document. This is a sort of backhanded authorization. Thus, House Bill 25 is a half solution. It recognizes there are other electronic notarizations distinct from remote notarizations. However, a definitive authorization for Notaries to perform in-person electronic notarial acts and a clarification that authorizes Notaries to perform in-person electronic notarial acts on any document requiring notarization and not just real property documents that are filed with a recorder are needed now.

Read House Bill 25.