Secretary of State Elaine F. Marshall and Director of Notary Enforcement Division Ozie Stallworth Fireside Chat for December 2022

 

In August the Secretary of State Elaine F. Marshall and Ozie Stallworth, the Director of the Notary Enforcement and Electronic Notary Division, decided to take their "Fireside Chats" on the road and off YouTube to give notaries in the near by areas to meet and chat with them. December 5, 2022 made number 3. We were able to receive insight from our NC Notary Liaison of the NCNA and Certified Commissioned NC Notary Public Instructor of Fayetteville Tech, Mike Brown that was part of the audience. This is what he shared with the organization afterwards...

"Our retiring President Dr. J. Larry Keen and our incoming President Dr. Mark Sorrells were on hand to great the team, and Dr. Keen and Secretary Marshall it turns our are old friends and have worked together to include in Moldova, with Dr. & Mrs. Keen accompanying Secretary Marshall on one of her trips to Moldova. Also in attendance with the Honorable Anita H. Lane, Register of Deeds for Sampson County in attendance. We had approximately 60 people in attendance, and Ozie said it was the largest gathering so far. 

They started the chat portion with the Secretary Marshall started off talking about the program and letting us know there are now 158,403 commissioned notaries in North Carolina and she the started the questions by asking Ozie to explain common questions that they receive about notary work in North Carolina to include the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANRM) #1, which has ended, but is still open for submissions. He also related that there will be an ANRM #2 as they work on the rules for Remote Electronic Notarization. He also explained to the group the change in name from Remote Online Notarization (RON) to Remote Electronic Notarization (REN) being that many other states that any notary in the RON states can do remote online notarizations, but in North Carolina, the remote notarizations are going to be restricted to Electronic Notaries. He also related that there are many complex rules and statutes they are working with to make sure all the stake holders are satisfied with the end product. He also explained that the July 1, 2023 is the first possible day that it will be possible to do REN in North Carolina, but it may not be ready to go on that date. Their goal is to try to be ready, but many complex issues are still being addressed so it might not be ready for the first date it is possible to use REN in NC. He also reiterated that Emergency Video Notarization (EVN) will expire on June 30, 2023 and after that date only Electronic Notaries will be able to anything with a video notarization. The spent time on questions about how a notary can charge, is it per page, per signature, per stamp or seal. Which they both took part in explaining. Also brought up as what to do if the document did not have a certificate attached, could a notary who is not an attorney 

He addressed questions about changes in the 2016 Manual, and told the group they are still considering that as well as the Notary Public Manual 2016 covers Article 1 of NCGS 10B, and the Electronic Notary Manual covers Article 2 of NCGS 10B, that like a summary of changes to 10B like the increase in fees from $5.00 to $10.00 and the addition to charge the IRS mileage reimbursement rate for mileage are the big changes on the traditional side, and the majority of the changes will be on the electronic side, but that is still under review as well. 

Several participants wanted to know about what fees a "signing agent" could charge as a notary public and Ozie and Secretary Marshall both spent quite some time addressing that the "signing agent' was being paid for services rendered to a client as the received, printed, traveled, and other things in conjunction with a real estate transaction. But that the limit that a notary could charge for a transaction was the notary fees in 10B, so if the HUD statement had a listing of Notary Fee $200.00, and there were four signatures, then that notary would have issues and face sanctions from the SOS. But if the HUD statement listed that fee as something else, then the signing agent would be okay as long as they also did not find themselves doing something that would be the unauthorized practice of law (UPL). He referred the signing agent questions to the pages in the manual that address signing agents and to the NC Bar about UPL.

I asked Ozie about the new EVN video that was to be released and it is still in a cue to be edited before it can be published. I also asked if there was any chance that the statute might be amended to allow the common access card (CAC) type of military identification to be used, since the new CAC card and new family member and retiree card do not meet the statutory requirement as identification. He said that they are still working with the legislature on possible changes to the law that would allow for the newer military ID.  He did reiterate that the older cards that have picture and signature or picture and physical descriptions are still valid.

Also there was a question about identifications in nursing homes and hospitals for patients who do not have valid identification, and he again let everyone know that while it may be an unfortunate situation, that the person's identification my be expired, that we must rely on either personal knowledge, satisfactory evidence, or a credible witness for identification, and he reminded the group that the residents of those facilities could obtain a state ID from the DMV. He stressed several times that out main purpose is to prevent fraud and forgery.  

Our video production crew at Fayetteville Tech did a recording of the entire presentation and provided it to Allison Perry who is going to post the presentation to the website. 

The chat lasted from 5:30 to round 7:30 p.m..."

To stay in the know of the upcoming Fireside Chat travel for the 2023, stay connected with the Secretary of State's Facebook page and the NC Notary Coach Facebook Page if you are not receiving emails directly from the SOS.