The Texas Secretary of State Changes To A New Universal Apostille Certificate System
October 7, 2023 
The Texas Secretary of State as of October 1st, 2023 has changed to a new universal apostille certificate system.
See the official press release from them here: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/TXSOS/bulletins/36fbde0
What that means to you and your company is you will no longer receive different certifications for Hague Convention country members (apostille certificates) and non-Hague member countries (authentication certificates).
You will now only receive this new Texas universal apostille certificate for every country in the world regardless if the country is a member or non-member of The 1961 Hague Convention.
The Texas Secretary of State will issue, print out, and staple a universal apostille certificate (the certificate is an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper) onto the legal document that was presented to them.
Then they will place a red stamp in the lower right-hand corner that will have half the stamp on the apostille certificate and the other half of the stamp placed on your document. Then the Texas Secretary of State employee who issued the apostille will sign their initials next to where they placed the stamp at.
If the document presented to them is a non-recordable document (documents that DO require notarizations), they will staple the universal apostille certificate onto the specific page where the notarization was placed on your document by a Texas notary public.
If the document presented to them is a recordable document (documents that DON’T require notarizations) they will staple the universal apostille certificate onto the specific page where the city, county, or state registrar, county clerk, district clerk, or deputy clerk signed their name on your legal document.
These two examples below are what the pre-10/1/23 Texas apostille certificates and Texas authentication certificates looked like which have been terminated and replaced by the new Texas universal apostille certificate system.
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