Cleveland, Ohio Notary Course Fees and Requirements
For those who are not attorneys, the Ohio notary course in Cleveland (Cuyahoga County) costs $130. Those who are granted a notary license must also buy a notary seal or stamp to use in their official capacity as a notary.
To take the course to become an Ohio notary public, you will need to pass a background check, which requires an additional fee. This check is to ensure you do not have any disqualifying offenses.
The course consists of three hours of online instruction that ends with a test that you must pass in order to receive the notary license. You have 30 days to retake the course if you don’t pass the test. But the course fee and background check fee are not refundable.
Final Steps of the Notary Application Process
The last step in the procedure is to complete a notary application at the Secretary of States office after passing the course. The “New Notary Application” contains details about you and the application procedure, including proof that you completed the course successfully.
Your background check report and your education certificate are the only pieces of information on your Ohio notary application. Additionally, it contains an updated signature, your full name, and residential address. A $15 application fee is additionally required, with the money going to the Secretary of States’ office.
Once the Secretary of States office has reviewed your application and confirmed your compliance with all requirements, the office will issue you an official commission.. This entitles you to perform the duties of an Ohio notary public. From there, you will connect with the Ohio Notary Store directly to purchase the tools you will need, including your official notary stamp.
Ohio’s notary public commissioning process changed on September 20, 2019. In order to standardize the notary public commission process and enable both online and electronic notarization, Ohio adopted the Notary Modernization Act in 2018. The procedure and rules that currently govern notaries had to change in order to accomplish these objectives. Lawyers and non-lawyers alike must abide by a new set of rules, including the application and educational requirements as well as the cost of becoming a notary. All first-time applicants, both lawyers and non-lawyers, as well as non-lawyer notaries who want to renew their existing commissions, will be impacted by these changes.
In light of these changes, the Cuyahoga Notary Public Commission is joining forces with the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association to make the new notary process seamless. They have also entered into a partnership with the Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo and Ohio State bar associations to create the Ohio Notary Services, LLC – an organization that will continue to have a local Cleveland presence as well as a new, statewide reach. Through this collaboration, we will still be able to handle all of your notary education and testing needs.