Notarial activities

Notarial acts executed by the office

In contrast to representants of other legal professions, a notary does not provide legal services and solely executes notarial acts, i.e. acts that parties are required, or want to give notarial form to, so that it becomes a public document. When executing  a notarial act, a notary is required to provide proper protection of rights and legitimate interests of the parties that a particular act may have legal effects for. A notary is also obliged to give the parties involved necessary explanations regarding the executed notarial act.

Notarial acts are executed by the notary in the Office. However, there is an option to execute them in any other place if the specifics of the act advocate it (e.g. meeting minutes of general stakeholder meeting), or under certain circumstances (e.g. poor health of a person who wishes to execute an notarial act). Notarial acts are executed in Polish. There is also a possibility to execute acts in a foreign language, with assistance of a sworn translator of the given language. Documents necessary to execute a notarial act, together with the party information should be supplied to the Office earlier, before the determined execution date.

When executing a notarial act, a notary is obliged to confirm the identity of act participants. Confirmation should take place on the basis of the Government issued identification forms (identity card, passport).

In accordance with the notary law, notarial acts include:

• drafting notarial deeds,
• drafting deeds of acknowledgement of inheritance,
• acknowledgement that a handwritten signature is valid,
• acknowledgement of compliance of a copy or extract with the original document,
• acknowledgement of the submission date of a document,
• delivering declarations,
• drafting protocols,
• drafting protests of bills of exchange and checks,
• drafting excerpts, copies and etracts of documents.

A notary is obliged to keep secret all the circumstances of the case about which he found out because of his execution of a notarial act, which is binding continually even after the notary is deposed from the fulfilled function. A notary is not bound by this obligation if he or she is testifying as a witness before court, unless the disclosure of the information poses a danger to the national interest or a very important personal interest. In such cases, the Minister of Justice may exempt the notary from the obligation to keep information secret.

For the execution of a notarial act the notary takes remuneration in the form of a notary fee\. VAT tax is to be added to the notary fee, and subsequently submitted by the notary to the tax authorities.

The originals of notarial deeds should be kept by the notary for 10 years since the moment they were drafted, and subsequently delivered to the archive of land and mortgage registers of the proper regional court.