Our apostille service makes it easy to authenticate your public documents for use in a foreign country. If you have documents that may require authentication for use abroad, we can help. With our apostille service you can:
Apostille is a French word meaning certification, most commonly used to refer to the legalization of a document for international use (under the terms of the 1961 Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents). The Convention provides for the simplified certification of public (including notarized) documents to be used in countries that have joined the convention.
It is a device that many governments, both foreign and domestic, use to certify that a document of foreign origin is genuine, and a true copy of the original.
Many documents can be certified with an Apostille including corporate documents such as company bylaws, articles of incorporation, power of attorney, as well as domestic documents such as birth certificates, passports, wills, and many more.
See our FAQ below for more information, or contact one of our team members who can help you obtain an Apostille easily and affordably.
Apostille certificates allow public documents issued in one country to be accepted in another. The authentication of public officials' signatures on your documents are made to allow recognition outside the United States of America.
Notarization is the act of officially certifying a legal document by a public notary. The purpose of having a legal document notarized is to ensure the authenticity of the signatures that appear on the document. Notarized Documents are valid for use inside the US.
The apostille is a favored form of document validation worldwide, even in countries that are not actually signatories to The Hague Convention. An Apostille certificate can be obtained for virtually any public document including:
Once a document has been Apostilled, thereby providing official government authentication of the signatures and stamps appearing on it, it is automatically deemed "legalized" for use in another member country. An Apostille is effective upon the date it is issued. An Apostille cannot be "back-dated."
An Apostille generally consists of the name of person signing the document, the capacity in which the person signing the document has acted, the place and date of the certification, the name of country from which the document emanates, and the signature of authority issuing certificate.
The Hague Convention is an intergovernmental convention that established a simplified system to allow documents originating in one member country to be easily recognized as authentic in another member country. This authentication is in the form of an Apostille.
The simplicity and lack of ambiguity associated with Apostilles has led to the Apostille becoming a favored form of validation of documents worldwide, even in countries that are not actually signatories to The Hague Convention. An Apostille certificate can be obtained for virtually any public document. The following is a non-exhaustive list of documents that can be issued with an Apostille certificate: