Every requirement, fee schedule, and regulation — sourced from state statutes and kept current.
Six categories of compliance data for every state, sourced directly from state statutes and administrative codes.
Term length, bond amounts, application fees, education requirements, and renewal process for each state.
Maximum fee caps per service, travel fee rules, and state-specific billing guidelines.
When journals are required, accepted formats, retention periods, and thumbprint requirements.
Seal types (embosser, ink stamp), required elements, prohibited colors, and dimensions.
Accepted ID types, credible witness rules, personal knowledge standards, and KBA requirements.
Issuing authority contact info, website, complaint procedures, and governing statutes.
Here's a preview of what California's compliance data looks like.
Secretary of State
Commission Term
4 years
Bond Required
$15,000
Fee Cap
$15/signature
Journal
Required
Authorized Services
Notarial law in the United States isn't one set of rules — it's 50, plus the District of Columbia, plus US territories, with each jurisdiction defining who can become a notary, what services are authorized, how fees are capped, what records must be kept, and what disqualifies a notary from acting. The differences aren't trivial. California's maximum fee for an acknowledgment is $15, while Indiana's is $10 and Florida's is $10 plus travel; California requires a journal entry for every notarization, while Pennsylvania does not require one for any; Virginia authorizes remote online notarization but Mississippi does not; Texas allows notaries to administer oaths outside the office but California restricts them to specific authorized acts.
The stakes for getting any of this wrong are not academic. A notary who exceeds the statutory fee cap is exposed to administrative discipline and civil liability. A notary who notarizes outside their authorized scope risks commission revocation and, in egregious cases, criminal charges for fraud. Every state has a record of commissions revoked because the notary "didn't know" — and "didn't know" has never been a defense.
Notary Guide's compliance data exists because the alternative for working notaries is to maintain a working knowledge of statutes that change every legislative session, in language designed for lawyers, with no consolidated official source.
The compliance dataset is built from three primary sources and verified against a fourth. Primary sources include each state's notary statute (e.g., California Government Code §§ 8200–8230, Texas Government Code Chapter 406, Florida Statutes Chapter 117); the official notary handbook or rules promulgated by each state's commissioning authority (Secretary of State or, in a handful of jurisdictions, the Governor's office or a notary commission); and direct administrative communications such as fee-cap rule changes published in state administrative registers. The verification source is the Uniform Law Commission's Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts updates, which document which jurisdictions have adopted which RULONA provisions.
Updates happen on two schedules. Monthly review scans every state's secretary-of-state notary news page, administrative register, and any legislative tracker hits matching notary-statute keywords. If anything changed — a new fee schedule, a new RON regulation, a new prohibited-act statute — the affected state's record is queued for revision and re-verified before publication. Same-week updates happen for events that change practice immediately: emergency rules during disaster declarations, RON activation/deactivation in a state, new credible-witness or KBA requirements.
Every revision carries a version pointer and a change log. The compliance UI shows the version date in the corner of each state guide; a notary who wants to confirm they're working from current data can check it in two seconds.
The clearest way to see why state-level compliance data is necessary is to look at how the same notarial act differs across four large states for the same scenario — a notary asked to perform a remote online notarization (RON) of a real-property document.
RON is not yet authorized for most documents. Real-property documents in California must be notarized in person under the current Secretary of State guidance. A California notary asked to perform a remote real-property notarization should decline; doing so anyway is a commission-revocation event.
RON has been authorized since 2018 under Government Code Chapter 406, Subchapter C. A Texas notary can perform RON if they are commissioned as an online notary public (a separate commission from the standard notary commission) and use an approved technology provider. The notary must record the entire session and retain the recording for at least five years.
RON has been authorized since 2020 with similar but distinct rules: the notary must complete a two-hour RON training course before applying for an online notary commission, must use a technology provider that meets the standards in Section 117.295, Florida Statutes, and must retain the audio-video recording for ten years.
RON was permanently authorized in 2023 after several years of emergency-rule extensions. A New York notary may perform RON without a separate commission but must register the technology provider with the Secretary of State and retain the recording for ten years.
A notary who works across state lines — or who advises clients on which state a RON should be performed in — needs this comparison at hand, not buried in four different statute volumes.
Routine changes (fee cap adjustments, new authorized services) are reflected within the same monthly review cycle, usually within two weeks of effective date. Urgent changes (emergency rules, RON activations) are reflected within the same week.
Each state's record includes verbatim citations to the relevant statute sections and a plain-language summary. The full statutory text is linked out to the state's official statute repository so a notary always has the authoritative source one click away.
Notaries are commissioned by a single state and authorized to act within that state. Notary Guide stores all 50 states' rules so a notary working near a state line, or one considering a commission in a second state, can compare directly. The compliance data does not authorize a notary to act outside their commissioned state.
Yes, where they exist. A handful of states (California's San Francisco journal-retention rules, certain New York City county requirements) have county-level variations; those are noted in the state record with the affected county and the variation.
Each state's RON status is one of four values — Authorized (permanent), Authorized (with sunset), Authorized (in-person notary only), or Not authorized — and is updated within the same-week schedule.
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