Mobile and remote signings

In our office

The closing happens at 3301 N University Drive in Coral Springs. Documents are on the table, the closer walks through them, and questions get answered by the person who prepared the file rather than relayed.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00. Signings outside those hours are arranged in advance on a specific file; we do not staff the office after hours as a standing matter.

Wherever the signer is

We send a notary to the signer — a kitchen table, an office, a hospital, a closing in another county. This is the ordinary answer when a signer cannot travel or when the schedule does not permit a trip to Coral Springs.

We can arrange a signing anywhere in the United States with three business days' notice. In Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade that is usually one of our own notaries; further out the file is still prepared and the documents still reviewed here, as they would be for any other closing. Either way the closer who prepared the file is reachable during the signing.

Three days is what we ask for, not a cut-off. Where a file needs a signing sooner than that — a lender's lock expiring, a seller flying out — we accommodate it up to the last day if we have to. Telling us early simply widens the choice of how.

Online, by remote online notarization

Florida authorizes remote online notarization: the signer appears before a Florida-commissioned online notary by audio-video link, with identity verification and a recorded session. For a signer out of state or out of the country, this is often the practical route.

The act has to be performed by a notary who holds a current Florida notary commission and is separately registered with the Department of State as an online notary public. Fla. Stat. § 117.225 sets out what that registration requires: the underlying commission, a course covering the duties and the technology, a $25,000 bond, and errors and omissions coverage of at least $25,000. A standard Florida notary commission on its own does not authorize a remote online notarization.

Nobody here holds that registration. The commissions held at Bayit Title were checked against the Department of State record and are standard Florida notary commissions, which authorize an in-person notarial act and not an online one.

So a remote online notarization on one of our files is performed by a Florida-registered online notary, under that notary's own registration, through the platform the session runs on — not by one of our own notaries. Nothing else about the closing moves: the file is prepared here, the documents are reviewed here, and the closer who built it is reachable during the session. What changes is who takes the acknowledgment, and it is someone the statute authorizes to take it.

Two things decide whether RON can be used on a given file, and neither is up to the signer: the lender has to accept remotely notarized documents, and so does the underwriter. We confirm both before scheduling rather than after.

Underwriters also keep their own lists of approved RON platforms, so the platform matters as much as the acceptance does. There is no single platform we put every file through: different remote signings run on different platforms, and we have closed on BlueNotary and on Proof among others. What is constant is the test rather than the name — whichever platform a session runs on is one our underwriter accepts, and we confirm that and the lender's acceptance before the session is booked rather than after.

That is also why the platform is worth raising early rather than late. A lender that will only accept a particular platform, or an underwriter that will not accept the one a signer has used before, is a constraint we would rather find at the start of the file than the night before a closing.

The exclusions written into the statute apply whatever the lender and the underwriter allow. Solemnizing marriage is outside RON under Fla. Stat. § 117.209(1). Wills, trusts with testamentary aspects, health care advance directives and powers of attorney carry the extra screening requirements in Fla. Stat. § 117.285, and electronic witnessing is not valid where the principal is a vulnerable adult as defined in s. 415.102.

Which one should we use?

Whichever removes the constraint on your file. A seller in another country is a RON or consulate question. A buyer who cannot leave work is a mobile signing. A first-time buyer who wants to sit down and go through the documents is usually best served in the office. There is no premium version — these are three ways of doing the same closing.

When should an attorney be involved?

Where someone is signing under a power of attorney, where a signer's capacity is in question, or where a party wants advice on the documents themselves rather than an explanation of what they are. We can tell you what a document does in the transaction; we are not lawyers and we do not advise on whether to sign it.

Common questions

Is a remote online notarization as valid as an in-person one?

It is a notarial act authorized by Florida law with its own identity verification and recording requirements.

Part II of chapter 117 is the authority. An online notary public — a Florida notary who has separately registered with the Department of State to perform online notarizations (Fla. Stat. § 117.201(10)) — may perform any notarial act authorized under part I of the chapter online, except solemnizing a marriage (§ 117.209(1)). Where a law requires a signer to appear before a notary, appearing by audio-video communication technology satisfies it, and § 117.215 provides that an online notarization performed under part II satisfies any requirement that a document be notarized, acknowledged, sworn or made under oath.

The limits worth knowing are these. The notary has to be physically in Florida; the signer does not — § 117.209(3) says an online notarization may be performed regardless of whether the principal or the witnesses are in the state, and § 117.209(4) makes Florida law the measure of the act’s validity wherever the signer was. Identity is established by credential analysis and identity proofing rather than by looking at a license across a table, and the session is recorded and journaled. None of that is optional, which is why RON is a different act rather than a video call with a notary on it.

Can everyone on the file sign a different way?

Usually yes. A buyer signing in the office and a seller signing remotely is common.

What does the signer need for a RON session?

A device with a camera and microphone, a stable connection, and valid identification for the verification step.

The statute sets the floor, and every approved platform implements it. Under Fla. Stat. § 117.265, unless the notary has personal knowledge of the signer, identity is established by all three of: the signer presenting a government-issued identification credential remotely over the audio-video link; credential analysis of that credential; and identity proofing, by knowledge-based authentication — a short set of questions generated from public and proprietary data, answered within a time limit — or another method conforming to the chapter.

For a signer outside the United States, a passport issued by a foreign government without a US immigration stamp may be used as the credential.

What varies by platform is the mechanics — how many attempts the knowledge-based authentication allows, and how a failed attempt is retried. We tell the signer what to have ready before the session rather than at the start of it.

Do you charge more for a mobile signing?

There is a charge, and it is the notary's cost passed through rather than a fee we add on top. It shows on the closing statement as a notary line, so it is visible before the table rather than discovered at it. A remote online notarization is treated the same way. An in-office signing carries neither.

What the charge comes to depends on where the signing is and what the notary charges for it, which is why it is quoted on the file rather than published here as a figure that would not hold.