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Safeguarding Your Seal and Journal
Your seal and journal are very valuable items, and should be treated as such. These items falling into the wrong hands can cause a great deal of trouble for you as well as others. Therefore, you are required to keep your seal and journal in a locked and secured area, and you should never allow anyone access to them.
Remember, there is a great deal of information in your journal, such as people’s names, addresses, and driver license numbers, as well as private information regarding their legal affairs. If you willfully fail to properly maintain your journal or if you or anyone else intentionally deface, destroy or conceal your notarial journal or any of your notarial records, you would be guilty of a misdemeanor and may also be liable for civil damages. There is a four-year statute of limitations on this crime. Government Code § 8221
If your journal is stolen, lost, destroyed, damaged or otherwise rendered unusable, or if you relinquish your journal to a peace officer, you must immediately notify the Secretary of State by certified or registered mail. This notification must include the period of time of the journal entries, your commission number, the expiration date of your commission, and, if it was stolen, a photocopy of any police report taken. If you do not property report the theft, loss, destruction or relinquishment of your journal to the Secretary of State, you would be guilty of a misdemeanor, and could also have your commission suspended or revoked. Government Code §§ 8206(b) and 8228.1
Your journal is your property and you must not surrender it to anyone, with the following exceptions:
·
The County Clerk of the county where you filed your oath (if you
resign or are removed from office); or
·
A
peace officer who is investigating a criminal offense. If your
journal is requested by a peace officer, you must surrender your
journal immediately or as soon as possible if the journal is not
present. The officer is then required to notify the Secretary of
State’s office within 24 hours or as soon as possible of the name of
the notary public whose journal was seized. You must obtain a
receipt for the journal, and notify the Secretary of State by
certified mail within 10 days that the journal was
relinquished to a peace officer. The notification shall include the
period of the journal entries, the commission number of the notary
public, the expiration date of the commission, and a photocopy of
the receipt.
Willful failure of a notary public to provide a peace officer with a journal when requested is grounds for suspension or revocation of your notary commission, and is punishable by a civil penalty of up to $2,500. The Secretary of State or a public prosecutor may seek such a penalty.
If your journal is lost, stolen, destroyed, unusable, or taken by a peace officer, you must obtain a new journal before you can perform any more notary acts. If or when the old journal is returned to you, do not make any more entries in it, except to note the fact that a new journal had been obtained and the date the new journal starts.
There can be severe penalties involved if you do not follow these procedures regarding your journal. You would be guilty of a misdemeanor if you do any of the following improper acts:
The Secretary of State or a Peace Officer (possessing reasonable suspicion of a crime) may examine your notarial records, including your journal, contracts, records, letters, and any other pertinent notarial documents.
Also, no one can force you to make journal entries that conflict with notarial laws. If someone solicits, coerces, or in any way influences you to improperly maintain your notarial journal, that person is guilty of a misdemeanor. There is a four-year statute of limitations on this crime. Government Code § 8225 |
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