■ You can only choose ONE foreign (non-USA) country per document. The Texas Secretary of State will only issue you ONE apostille certificate on ONE document and for ONE foreign (non-USA) country. This means the Texas Secretary of State will not issue you multiple apostille certificates or for multiple countries on one document.
■ Your TXDPS-issued background check report does not need to be notarized because it is considered a recordable government document like a birth or death certificate.
■ All Texas Secretary of State government document filing fees are included in our flat fee rush Texas apostille service pricing. You do not mail or drop off to us a check, cashier’s check, or money order made out to the Texas Secretary of State for state document filing fees since we pay for all of that not you.
■ Because we will be rush filing your documents physically in person at the Texas Secretary of State’s office on your behalf you do not complete or mail/email/drop off to us the Texas Apostille Form 2102 or Texas Apostille Form 2103 (for foreign adoptions only). We have a different apostille order form that we must complete and submit to the State of Texas along with your documents.
■ This is not the correct order form page to use if you want to apostille an FBI criminal background check and identity history summary which is classified as a federal not state-level (Texas) document. You must go to our FBI background check order page to place an FBI apostille service order.
■ Above you can upload as many Texas Department of Public Safety (TXDPS) issued criminal background check report PDFs as you want (when you have multiple background checks for you and your wife or you want to obtain multiple apostille certificates to be used in multiple countries) but you can only upload one document (PDF attachment) at a time. You only have to give us ONE prepaid return shipping label regardless of how many TXDPS criminal background check reports you have or how many apostilles you want to order.
■ You can only place an online order (you click on the email button below and upload on this page your original TXDPS background check report PDF and prepaid return shipping label) with us if you ordered and downloaded a digital/electronic version (PDF) of your TXDPS-issued background check. If you were only mailed your TXDPS-issued background check report and you never requested and downloaded the optional digital/electronic PDF version of your TXDPS-issued background check you cannot order online with us.
In this case, you’ll have to drop off or mail your original TXDPS-issued background check (the one you received in the mail) to us plus a prepaid return shipping label and this printed-out apostille order form page. Also, in case you were thinking this you can’t make photocopies or scan the TXDPS-issued background check report pages that were physically mailed to you and then drop off or email us the PDF scanned copies to apostille.
The Texas Secretary of State will only accept the original PDF file of your TXDPS-issued background check that you downloaded or will download from the TXDPS website. You can’t drop off to us photocopies or email us scanned copies because the original TXDPS-issued background check report PDF has security watermark features built into the PDF that you can’t see.
■ When creating and buying a FedEx, UPS, or DHL prepaid return shipping label they will ask you for a sender’s address (from address) which means if your documents get lost in the mail the sender’s address is the return address of where the undelivered documents will be sent back to by FedEx, UPS, or DHL.
You must put your name and address or your company’s name and address as the sender (from address) on the prepaid shipping label and/or on the customs invoice if shipping internationally. Depending on what foreign country you live in outside the U.S the FedEx, UPS, or DHL online system may see your foreign IP address and not let you put your foreign address in as the sender (from address). If this happens you must list a friend, relative, or company office address which is located in the U.S as the sender (from address).
You CANNOT put our company name (Apostille Texas) or our address as the sender because we are not the sender. The sender is you because you created and paid for the prepaid return shipping label, not us and you are 100% responsible for paying all shipping and customs charges when shipping internationally.
We will not mail your documents back to you if you mail, email, or drop off to us a prepaid return shipping label or customs invoice that wrongly has our company name, phone number, or address listed anywhere on it. FedEx, UPS, and DHL wrongly send us and try to collect from our company unpaid shipping bills because people and companies don’t pay their full shipping charges and customs fees when sending internationally.
■ Our Texas same day document filing services cutoff time is noon CST Monday-Friday. If you mail, email, or drop off your documents to us after 12pm CST your documents will not normally be submitted to the Texas Secretary of State office until the following business day.
■ As of May 15, 2024, the Texas Secretary of State drastically changed their apostille filing turnaround time policies. Depending on how many total documents are submitted to them per day by any person or company your documents might not be issued an apostille certificate from the Texas Secretary of State until 48 hours (two business days) after we SAME DAY file your documents with them. This could happen even if we receive your documents by mail or drop off before or by our 12pm CST filing deadline please be advised.
If this were to happen on a drop off order we will instruct and notify you via email by 3:30 pm CST to go purchase a prepaid return FedEx or UPS shipping label. Then drop the return shipping label off at our office or email us the prepaid return label PDF so we can mail your documents back to you (or to wherever and whomever you want them sent to which is up to you) once the Texas Secretary of State issues your apostille certificate.
If you do not provide us with a prepaid return shipping label you’ll have to travel back to our office in two or three business days after you dropped off documents at our office. Please don’t return to our office for a second time until we confirm that the Texas Secretary of State has issued your apostille certificate and you’ve received an email from us stating that your apostilled documents are now ready to be picked up. In this scenario, if you dropped documents off to us on a Friday your documents would not be ready to be picked up until Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon of the next week.