Why could or why were my documents
rejected by the Texas Secretary of
State’s office?
These are the most common reasons why a person’s or company’s documents get rejected by the Texas Secretary of State’s office…
A) The Texas notary public forgot to sign their name on your non-recordable document, the notary signed their name wrong (if the notary doesn’t sign their name on your document exactly how it’s printed on their official notary stamp the Texas Secretary of State will reject the document), the notary public didn’t date the document properly, the notary didn’t stamp the document or stamp the document on the specific page they signed their name on, the notary public didn’t add the exact state-required jurat or acknowledgment verbiage to your non-recordable documents.
B) You try to get a non-Texas document apostilled or authenticated. For example, let’s say you were born in California and need your birth certificate apostilled, but you live in Texas now. You can’t apostille a California birth certificate or any other type of recordable document with its origin based outside of Texas.
Only Texas-issued and originated recordable documents and Texas-notarized non-recordable documents can be apostilled and authenticated in and for the State of Texas.
C) You try to apostille or authenticate photocopies of a document when only original documents will be accepted at the Secretary of State’s office.
D) You try to apostille or authenticate a document with a copy of someone’s signature on the document. Again only original documents with original wet ink signatures will be accepted, so a company or person that uses copies (autopen, Docusign, or electronic copy) of their executive’s signatures on business documents will be rejected.
E) If the document you send us is missing the signature of the official or person that was supposed to sign the document.
F) The signature of the person or official that signed the document is not legible and there is no printed name of that person on the document for the Secretary of State to acknowledge who they are and in what capacity they’re signing under.
G) When a translator (who is also a licensed notary) wrongly notarizes their own translated document for a client. A translator cannot notarize their own document translation work. They must use a separate Texas notary public for this.
H) The Texas recordable document that you sent us is too old and the Texas Secretary of State cannot find the record in their database. Any Texas recordable document (birth certificate, death certificate, marriage certificate or marriage license, divorce decree, or divorce certificate, Texas DPS-issued criminal background check or vehicle driving records) issued pre-1980 is too old.
In this case, you will need to order a new raised seal certified copy of your record from Texas Vital Records/Texas Vital Statistics or directly from the Texas county where the recordable event happened.
If your Texas recordable document was issued between 1980-1999 you have in our experience about a 50% shot it will be rejected by the state because they can’t find the record. If your documents were issued in 2000 or earlier we’ve never seen one get rejected by the State (knock on wood)and only a few times ever have we seen a recordable document rejected from as late as the 1990s.
