If you are in Melbourne and cannot travel overseas, documents where you need your signature witnessed and/or needs verification to be used outside of Australia will likely need a notary public in Melbourne to legalise.
You should find out what exact documents needs to be notarised from your overseas lawyer or the person receiving your document before booking an appointment with a notary public in Melbourne. It is important to ensure the document can actually be used to achieve your purpose after it has been notarised. All public notaries in Melbourne merely notarise the document but do not check whether the document is legally enforceable. Similarly, you should confirm whether your document needs to be translated into another language or into English. Our Public Notary speaks and writes Chinese/Mandarin/Cantonese/Hokkien so can verify that you have understood the contents of Chinese documents and help prepare the appropriate documents and forms to notarise your document. For other languages besides English where a translation is required, we can obtain a professional translator from NAATI at competitive rates as part of our notary public services. Another essential consideration from a costs point of view is to determine whether you need a notarial certificate. You can ask the end receiver of your documents of their requirements.
You should pre-fill the documents save for the signing page, consider how many copies you need and bring your identification documents with you to your notary public appointment. We charge additional fee to print or make photocopies of documents at our office so you should print and bring adequate copies prior to your appointment to save money, especially if you have already signed the document whilst not in the present of our notary public. Another important consideration for some countries like India is that a bonded or stamp paper is required to be paid for and the documents with these papers will need to be received by you prior to your notary appointment.
Search for notary public and get a quote. Our Notary Public in Melbourne charges a fixed-fee based on the work performed and is for the most part priced in accordance with the industry’s recommended price list.
If you only need to have documents certified as a true copy of an original document, you can ask anyone who is above 18 years old who has capacity to make decisions and pay us to attend the notary public appointment at our Melbourne CBD office. If you need a notary public to witness your signature then you need to attend our office. Whoever attends our office will need to produce 100 points of ID, i.e. Victorian Drivers Licence, Australian Passport. You can see the exact identification documents to bring here
Once you attend the appointment our Melbourne Notary Public can notarise the documents, following which you can then complete the rest of the process for legalisation yourself or ask us to do it for you, i.e. correspond with DFAT or the local consulate or embassy.
Please call our office on 03 9602 3988 for a quote. Alternatively, please send us an email at chuatan@tpg.com.au . You can read more about what we do here .