Notary Services
NOTARY SERVICE GUIDELINES
July 2023
The Town Clerk’s office provides Notary Services to residents as a courtesy during our normal business hours. To ensure that a Notary is available, we ask that you please call-in advance to confirm. Effective immediately, the following guidelines will be followed when providing Notary Services:
- There is a three (3) signature notarization limit.
- Notary Services are NOT available for the following documents: wills, living wills, trusts, power of attorneys and codicils.
- By law and with few exceptions that are not available to Town Clerk staff, Notaries may not notarize real estate documents such as deeds and mortgages (see M.G.L. c 222 §17(e)).
- A valid, government-issued photo identification is required of any person seeking Notary Services.
- You must present the full document that is being notarized to the Notary.
- The document(s) CANNOT be signed or dated prior to appearing in front of the Notary Public.
- All signers must be present at the time of notarizing.
- If the document requires a witness, you MUST provide your own and they must be present at the time of notarizing. The Town does not provide witnesses.
- The document must contain the appropriate Notarial Statement or Clause, or one will be stamped on the document by the Notary.
- With the exception of true copy attests, documents in any language other than English will not be notarized at this facility.
- Certain official documents cannot be copied and notarized. Examples of these are birth, marriage and death certificates.
- Massachusetts law requires that a Notary and the person seeking notarization be able to communicate directly with each other.
- In accordance with Massachusetts Notarial Law, Notaries will not provide service if the customer, document, or circumstances of the request for Notary Services raise any issue of authenticity, ambiguity, doubt, or uncertainty. In this event, the Notary may, at his/her sole discretion, decline to provide Notary Services.
