Frequently Asked Questions
An Apostille is a certification used to authenticate the origin of public documents so they can be recognized for international use. Once a document has an Apostille, it is considered valid in any other country that is a member of The Hague Convention of 1961.
Documents most covered by Apostille:
- Vital documents (e.g., birth, death, marriage certificates)
- Notarial acts documents
- Court documents
- Administrative documents (e.g., degrees, licenses, transcripts)
- Certain commercial documents
You can email a scan copy to us for verification purpose only. Vital documents such as birth, death, marriage and divorce documents must be original to be apostilled. You may be able to order a new certified true copy of these at www.vitachek.com. All other notarized documents must also be original in order to be apostilled.
The standard apostille time is between 2 and 5 biz days. We also offer a 24 hours turnaround time Rush Service (from the time we receive your documents). You can also mail in your original documents so we can hand-carry the documents to the State of California to issue the apostille, and we will overnight the apostilled document to you same day or next day.
Yes, as long as the signer signed his name on these documents in front of a notary here in California, then you can mail the original notarized documents to us for apostille. We can also go to your location in Los Angeles to do notary, then apostille for you. The documents can be in English or foreign languages.
We cannot order vital documents such as birth and marriage certificates. These documents can’t be ordered by a third party. However, you can order most of these online from www.vitalchek.com.
You can learn all about it here: https://www.hcch.net/en/instruments/specialised-sections/apostille