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Notaries: What You Need to Know, Sovereign Citizens
“Sovereign Citizens” - Top Facts That Notaries Need to KnowPublished July 29, 2026
For decades, America's sovereign citizens have valued and sought the services of duly commissioned U.S. notaries.
Any notary encountering a sovereign citizen will never forget the experience. What makes them so memorable are two near-certain and startling features of the encounter:
1. Sovereign citizens usually do not possess any form of customary, documentary evidence of identification that the notary is allowed by law or administrative rules to accept; and
2. The documents presented for a notarial act usually will not conform or even seem similar to any document the notary has ever seen presented for notarization of a signature.
Why do these facts typify a notary/sovereign citizen encounter? It’s all about the core beliefs and practices of the entire sovereign citizen movement. A general web search produced this helpful summary:
“The sovereign citizen movement is a loosely organized network of individuals who reject the legitimacy of government authority and claim that they are not subject to any federal, state, or local laws. Although adherents often assert that they can opt out of legal obligations such as taxes, licensing requirements, or court jurisdiction, these claims have been consistently rejected by U.S. courts.
The movement encompasses a range of beliefs and tactics, from filing pseudo legal documents to challenging law enforcement during routine encounters. While most sovereign citizens engage in nonviolent activities, some confrontations have escalated into criminal acts and violence, prompting law enforcement agencies to monitor the movement as a potential domestic security concern. Understanding its origins, ideology, and legal standing provides important context for evaluating its impact on the American legal system and public safety.”
The documents sovereign citizens present for notarization often contain what many would view as outlandish statements or declarations that do not align with the average U.S. citizen’s understanding of our rule of law. But, barring any specific law or administrative rule to the contrary, the core principles of notarization prevent a notary from refusing to notarize based solely on the contents of the document presented, no matter how outlandish those contents may seem.
For every notarization, the notary’s primary concern is verifying that the document contains notarial wording—the “notarial certificate”—that exactly or sufficiently reflects the wording specified by the notary’s governing law and/or administrative rules. The notarial act indicated in the notarial certificate must be one the notary’s state allows them to perform. The notary also must be able to make a reasonable description of the document (such as date, number of pages, and the signer’s name) in the notary’s recordbook (journal) entry, and observe the name of the individual named in the document as the intended signer. The document’s contents are generally not the notary’s concern, even content that the notary and any other average person would view as incorrect or outlandish.
Indeed, where most all sovereign citizen notarization requests will fail is (1) when the notary attempts to explain the requirement of adding or modifying notarial certificate language so it satisfies the requirements of the notary’s applicable state laws and administrative rules; and (2) when the notary attempts to satisfactorily identify the present, named document signer, as noted above.
Paradoxically, sovereign citizens will often pressure a legally commissioned notary to notarize for them because they have learned that a legitimate notarial certificate, signed and sealed by a duly commissioned notary public, increases the likelihood that the document will be accepted into public records. Sometimes—and this could happen under any circumstances with any party that might be involved, not just sovereign citizens—the pressure on the notary to proceed is so strong that the notary gives in.
Whether the notary proceeds with the notarization, refuses, or the customer grows so frustrated that they leave to find a different notary, we recommend that the notary create a dated journal entry with all the standard information that the notary is able to correctly recall, and a notation about how and why the notarization was terminated.
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