What kind of documents would these notary statements be most appropriate for? I'm thinking of documents like witness testimony, wills, trusts, asset ownership, statements, LLC, events, etc.
"For an acknowledgement in an individual capacity:"
"For an acknowledgement in a representative capacity:"
"For certifying a copy of a record:"
"For a verification on oath or affirmation:"
"For witnessing or attesting a signature:"
Acknowledgements are generally used for real estate documents, wills, and trusts, in which a notary officially confirms that the document signed by a person was really signed by that person. In theory, a notary's acceptance of an acknowledgment of a document from someone who signed it doesn't have to be contemporaneous with the signing of the document, although it almost always is.
Acknowledgements usually aren't necessary for a document to be valid, but are necessary for a document recorded in the real estate records to be entitled to a presumption of validity.
Acknowledgements also allow a will to be admitted to probate without new sworn testimony from a witness regarding its authenticity at the time of death when it is submitted to a court. A duly signed, witnessed, and notarized will which contains some "magic words" about what the person signing the will and their witnesses agree happened is when it was signed is called "self-authenticating."
An acknowledgement in an individual capacity means that the notary confirmed with the person who purportedly signed that document that they really signed it.
An acknowledgment in a representative capacity means that the person who signed it also confirmed with the notary that they held the title described in in acknowledgement such as "President of XYZ Corp.", or "Executor of the Estate of Fred Flintstone", or "As power of attorney agent for Jim Jones."
Saying "For witnessing or attesting a signature" is just another name for an acknowledgement.
An affidavit or verification is a written statement of facts which is signed by the person making it, after a notary confirms that the person is who they say they are and says "do you swear that this statement is true," and the person says "yes." If the statement of facts is free standing, it is called an affidavit. If it is a document prepared by someone else that has a purpose beyond merely stating facts (such as a complaint in a lawyer prepared by the lawyer for the person signing off on it), it is usually called a verification.
Verifications under oath and affidavit are used for affidavits, which are sometimes submitted in support of court filings, sometimes used to place an individual's statement in the real estate records (e.g. confirming that someone named in a real estate record has died), and are sometimes used in official statements (often to government agencies).
Affidavits are written substitutes for in person testimony under oath (although they aren't complete substitutes, as they aren't subject to cross-examination, so affidavits are inadmissible hearsay for many purposes).
In the federal courts and in some state courts, a "Declaration" under penalty of perjury can be used in lieu of an affidavit for court filings. A declaration is a statement of facts that concludes with a phrase such as "I state that the foregoing facts are true under penalty of perjury" and signed by the person making the declaration, without a notary present or administering an oath.
Declarations are accepting in many court cases, because the lawyer submitting the declaration to the court (or the unrepresented litigant submitting the declaration to a court clerk) is making an implied representation to the court that the person who signed the declaration really is the person who purports to be signing the declaration.
In contrast, affidavits can be used even when there is no lawyer serving as an intermediary to confirm that the person signing the document was really the person whom the document purports to be signing it, because the notary confirms this fact. So, in real estate records, for example, you can record an affidavit, but a declaration under penalty of perjury does not have the same presumptive authenticity.
A notarization of real estate records is important in the U.S., because often, everyone who was personally involved in a real estate transaction will be dead by the time that the document recorded in the real estate records is used, and this allows the authenticity of the real estate record to be established without unnecessary testimony in court. For example, I once was a lawyer in a real estate transaction in the 1990s, where one of the relevant documents in the chain of title was an affidavit from Millard Fillmore, who lived from January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874 and was the 13th President of the United States, in connection with his pre-Presidency ownership of the real estate that was the subject of the real estate transaction, for a period of time.
Establishing the authenticity of documents filed in the real estate records in the U.S. is especially important because real estate in the U.S. isn't subject to a certificate of title system. Instead, in the U.S., ownership of real estate is established by locating all documents relevant to the parcel of real estate in question in the county real estate records and using those records to show a chain of title that establishes ownership and sets forth the various rights that people may have in the parcel of real estate (e.g. ownership rights, mortgage rights, easement rights, water rights, and mineral rights).
A certification is basically an affidavit from a notary stating that an attached document is a true and correct copy of an original, or is the original. It would normally be used to authenticate a document submitted to a court, or when submitted to a government agency or non-governmental official to use as a basis for authorizing some sort of official action (e.g. a birth certificate might be certified in order to issue a passport).
In addition to taking acknowledgments, administering oaths and verifying sworn documents, and certifying documents, there are a few other more obscure things that notaries do.
Notaries can administer oaths of office.
Notaries can administer oaths to tell the truth to witnesses in a deposition.
Notaries can sign a document by which a bank officially dishonors a bad check.
There are probably a few other obscure notarial acts that aren't coming to mind at the moment as well.
In the United States, notaries play a very narrow and ministerial role. They supervise the signing and authenticate the authenticity of certain important documents. A U.S. notary typically has to be an adult with no serious criminal record who has studied the extremely narrow body of law governing this exceedingly narrow and mechanical task and has paid to have a notary stamp made after being granted the title by a state secretary of state for a certain period of time. The notary may also have a duty to keep a log of all notarizations that the notary has done, sometimes called a "notary book."
Typically, notary status is a certification obtained by someone who is a lawyer or paralegal in a law office, or a bank officer, or an administrative staff member at a car dealership, that authorizes them to perform these official duties as a part-time public official, in addition to their day job of doing whatever they do in some office that sometimes needs to have documents notarized. A U.S. notary is ordinarily authorized by the state secretary of state to carry out notarial acts anywhere in that U.S. state, and there is normally no limit on the number of people who can have the occupational qualification of being a notary. A notary's occupation license can be revoked for criminal convictions or violations of state rules applicable to notaries.
It is legal to be a free standing notary who just notarizes things in the U.S., but many U.S. notaries who do this are really catering to people from civil law countries (like most of Latin America) who think they are dealing with a legally trained professional akin to a civil law lawyer, but are actually practicing law without a license. Often free standing notaries also do tax form preparation and help people fill out preprinted government forms.
The U.S. also have a number of government officials who work in and around the courts and county government offices, who have the authority to do some or all of the things that notaries do.
For example, judges can also administer oaths. Similarly, in some states, court clerk have the authority to notarize affidavits for litigants who want to submit affidavits to them but don't have a notary readily available.
Along the same lines, county governments in some states have low level civil servants, sometimes called "commissioners of deeds" who also have the right to formally acknowledge real estate documents just as a notary would, and to administer oaths for the purpose of allowing people to execute real estate record affidavits, in addition to their other responsibilities as low level civil servants in county government offices related to the real property recording and taxation system in the U.S.
In many common law countries other than the U.S., for reasons that I don't honestly know or understand, notaries often have to be experienced lawyers, even though their notarial duties are basically the same as those of U.S. notaries.
The concept of officials called notaries in common law countries was something borrowed by England from civil law countries (primarily France) at the time that those countries were "receiving" the Roman law and putting Roman law back into full force and effect on behalf of feudal lords, before civil law countries adopted their civil codes. This role was then watered down in England to fit local needs, which were different in England, because its legal professions (e.g., barristers and solicitors, in addition to some niche legal professions in equity and admiralty courts) that had already developed along a different path than the legal professions in civil law countries did.
In civil law countries (e.g., France and Germany and Spain), notaries have much greater responsibilities. They are legally trained and will often draft legal documents and keep copies of those legal documents as public records, rather than merely confirming that they were duly signed by the people claiming to sign them. Thus, civil law notaries are both transactional lawyers and also have a role akin to the clerk and recorder's office and the Secretary of State's office, with regard to important legal documents related to land, corporations, estate planning, and other official legal matters.
In a civil law country, a notarized document drafted by or approved by the notary is not just a document with an authenticated signature. The validity and form of the underlying notarized agreement or legal instrument, which was drafted by or approved by the notary after substantive legal review of it, is also presumptively valid - while in the U.S. and other common law countries, the substantive validity of a notarized document is not something that the notary is vouching for and is only formally tested in the event that this is disputed in litigation.
Civil law country notaries are a hybrid of a quasi-governmental official and a private lawyer, who basically owe their duties to the transaction rather than primarily to a particular client. Notary offices in civil law countries are basically highly regulated private businesses.
Typically, in civil law countries, only a certain number of notary licenses exist in any given notary license district (typically there would be several licenses available in each district) and civil law notaries can only do business in the district in which they have a license (these districts typically range in size from a large neighborhood of a city to the rough equivalent of a U.S. county), and if you want to be a notary in that district, you have to buy a notary license from someone who has one in that district, in addition to having passed the occupational licensing exams to practice as a notary after completing your legal education.
The only profession that is organized this way in the United States, in contrast, is that of a stock broker who can trade stocks on the floor of a stock exchange (or commodities exchange), but who must also have a federal license to be eligible to buy and perform duties as the owner of a seat on that stock exchange.
Many corporate records that are maintained internally by officials within a corporation and not notarized by signed either by individuals involved in a transaction or by a corporate secretary, in the U.S., such as transfers of ownership interests in stock, are, in civil law countries, notarized with an official copy maintained by a third-party notary who is not an internal official of the corporation.
Records maintained by a civil law notary are generally more publicly available than the internal records of a U.S. corporation, but are less publicly available than U.S. real estate or court or state secretary of state or Securities and Exchange Corporation records.
Civil law notaries also play a much larger role in the probate administration process than common law notaries do.
