Understanding Apostille
An apostille is a type of document validation granted by nations that are a part of the 1961 Hague Convention.
The US State Department keeps a list of countries that accept apostilles.
On September 16, 2021, the Apostille Convention was adopted in Singapore.
If you need documents recognised by Apache Convention Contracting Parties, apply for an Apostille from the Singapore Academy of Law.
If you need to present documents to non-contracting parties of the Apostille Convention, you should reach out to the Singapore Academy of Law and then the relevant embassies to legalise the documents if necessary.
If the target recipient country has not signed the Hague Convention, the documents may need to be authenticated or certified before they can be transferred.
The Secretary of State’s Office provides apostille and authentication services to U.S. citizens and foreign nationals for documents later set to be used overseas.
Documents which may require these services include company documents like bylaws and articles of incorporation, power of attorney, diplomas, transcripts, letters relating to degrees, references and job certifications, home studies, deeds of assignments, distributorship agreements, documents for adoption, and so on.
Furthermore, the U.S. State Department provides general information on document authentications and apostilles under the 1961 Hague Convention.
How to Obtain an Apostille
An Apostille authenticates the seals and signatures on public documents such as birth certificates or court orders, or any document issued by a public office and certified by an American or foreign consul.
For these documents to be accepted in foreign countries that are signatories to the 1961 Hague Convention Treaty, they receive an apostille certification.
However, apostilles are only affixed to public documents intended for use in countries that are a part of the 1961 Hague Convention.
Follow these steps before submitting documents that require authentication:
- Ensure that every document is notarised in the presence of a notary public:
- When it comes to notaries publicly commissioned through the county, documents should first be authenticated by the court clerk in the county where the notary received their commission.
- Then, the secretary of state, where the document was notarised, should provide certification.
- For public notaries commissioned by the state, the documents must simply be certified by the secretary of state in the state where the document was notarised.
- To notarise and certify your document, go through the following steps:
- Receive your document.
- Have your document notarised.
- When applicable, get a certification for your document from the court clerk.
- Let the secretary of state certify your document.
- Remember that if a document requires certification from both the clerk of court and the secretary of state, the dates must show that the court clerk certification came first.
Please note: Your requests won’t be processed if you don’t obtain the proper notarisation(s) before submitting your documents.
Original seals and signatures are required.
Only “genuine certified copies” from a notary public are accepted.
A notary public may not certify birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, divorce decrees, court documents, or federally-issued documents as “true copies.”
These types of documents must be certified by the secretary of state.
Any documents written in a foreign language must be accompanied by notarised translations done by a certified translator.
