Opposition of the Journal Abolition Act

SUMMARY

The Commercial Law and Uniform State Laws Committee issued a report opposing enactment of the “Journal Abolition Bill”, which would override the Governor’s 2024 veto of identical legislation and abolish all notarial recordkeeping for wet-ink notarizations. “Enactment of the Journal Abolition Bill would be contrary to the recognized best notarial practice – a best practice now embodied in the regulations of the New York Secretary of State and the law of 22 other states and the District of Columbia – of requiring notaries public to keep a written record, commonly called a ‘notary journal,’ of all notarial services performed memorializing the act and the documentary proof of identity of the signer. Abolition of this simple requirement would expose New Yorkers, and especially low-income and vulnerable individuals, to a rising tide of home theft and other crimes using fraudulent documents and forged notarizations.” “In submitting this opposition, the Committee joins in the position of professional notaries public nationwide who uniformly endorse mandatory notarial recordkeeping laws as an essential protection for the public and for notaries themselves, including protection for lawyers who act as notaries.”

Originally Issued June 2025; Last Reissued April 2026

BILL INFORMATION

A.7683 (AM Lavine) / S.9775 (Sen. Sepulveda) – Limits recordkeeping and reporting duties of public notaries to electronic notarization acts (NYS 2025-26).

REPORT

REPORT ON LEGISLATION BY THE COMMERCIAL LAW AND UNIFORM STATE LAWS COMMITTEE

A.7683 (M. of A. Lavine)
S.9775 (Sen. Sepulveda) 

AN ACT to amend the executive law, in relation to limiting recordkeeping and reporting duties of public notaries

THIS BILL IS OPPOSED

The Commercial Law and Uniform State Laws Committee (“Committee”) of the New York City Bar Association (“City Bar”) opposes enactment of A.7683 (AM Lavine) / S.9775 (Sen. Sepulveda) (“Journal Abolition Bill”), which would override the Governor’s 2024 veto of identical legislation and abolish all notarial recordkeeping for wet-ink notarizations.

Enactment of the Journal Abolition Bill would be contrary to the recognized best notarial practice – a best practice now embodied in the regulations of the New York Secretary of State and the law of 22 other states and the District of Columbia – of requiring notaries public to keep a written record, commonly called a “notary journal,” of all notarial services performed memorializing the act and the documentary proof of identity of the signer. Abolition of this simple requirement would expose New Yorkers, and especially low-income and vulnerable individuals, to a rising tide of home theft and other crimes using fraudulent documents and forged notarizations.  The scant justifications for the Journal Abolition Bill offered in the legislative record are without legal or factual substance.

In submitting this opposition, the Committee joins in the position of professional notaries public nationwide who uniformly endorse mandatory notarial recordkeeping laws as an essential protection for the public and for notaries themselves, including protection for lawyers who act as notaries. The leading notarial organization in the state, the New York Notary Alliance, officially opposes enactment of the Journal Abolition Bill. The National Association of Notaries strongly endorses notary journal requirements as the best protection of the public against documentary fraud and of notaries against wrongful accusations of notarial malpractice. Tellingly, no notarial organization or even individual notaries have stepped forward to offer support for the Journal Abolition Bill. To the Committee’s knowledge, the only supporters of the Bill are lawyers who find the requirements for proper notarization practices to be a “nuisance,” and who seek exemption of their staff from the duties imposed on all other notaries. Such objections to a journal and passage of the Bill would allow attorneys to dissuade or forbid their notarial employees from availing themselves of the protections of notary journals.

The plain fact of the matter is that fraudulent wet-ink notarizations – rather than electronic notarizations – of paper conveyances make home theft possible. As the State Legislature has repeatedly recognized, deed fraud occurs with increasing frequency in New York and most often targets the poor and vulnerable populations who are least able to protect themselves. Indeed, several bills strengthening the journal requirement to prevent deed fraud and home theft are currently pending in the Legislature. The Journal Abolition Bill would substantially negate the protections of those bills and would deprive forgery victims and prosecutors of valuable evidence necessary to seek redress for deed fraud and other documentary fraud.

For the reasons detailed below, the Journal Abolition Bill should not pass.

I. BACKGROUND OF THE JOURNAL ABOLITION BILL

In 2023, the New York Secretary of State promulgated long-awaited regulations, 19 NYCRR Part 182, to update New York’s antiquated notarial rules, provide for electronic notarizations and enhance protection against an epidemic of home theft and other documentary fraud. Part 182 included a new rule, Section 182.9, that now requires notaries to keep a written record of all notarial acts, both wet-ink and electronic, including details of the verification of the identity of persons for whom a notarial act is performed. The City Bar issued a report (“2023 Report”)^[1] in support of these notarial reforms, especially the recordkeeping requirement of Section 182.9. The 2023 Report refuted certain criticisms of the regulation and concluded that Section 182.9 was validly issued and provided an important safeguard against “deed fraud” – i.e., the use of forged notarized documents to record fraudulent real property transfers – and other forms of documentary fraud and notarial misconduct.

The Legislature nevertheless passed a prior version of the Journal Abolition Bill in 2024, A.7241-A (A.M. Lavine) / S.8663 (Sen. Hoylman-Sigal), to rescind Section 182.9.  The Committee opposed that legislation in a public letter addressed to the Governor.^[2]  Governor Hochul vetoed the legislation on November 22, 2024.

The new Journal Abolition Bill was introduced in the State Legislature on April 4, 2025.  With a single sentence, the Journal Abolition Bill would add a new Section 135-d to the executive law to eliminate Section 182.9’s recordkeeping requirements for all wet-ink notarizations, but not for electronic notarizations. The only rationales offered in the Sponsor’s Memorandum for the Bill’s complete erasure of Section 182.9’s protection against wet-ink notarization fraud is that its requirements “are unduly burdensome and serve no legitimate purpose” and somehow “have a chilling effect on those wishing to act as notaries and pose serious attorney-client privilege concerns for attorneys acting as notaries.”^[3] The Sponsor’s Memorandum, however, does not provide any facts or analysis to support these conclusory statements.

The Journal Abolition Bill was passed by the State Assembly on April 28, 2025. It now awaits action by the State Senate.

II. NOTARY JOURNALS ARE AN ESSENTIAL SAFEGUARD AGAINST FRAUD

As the 2023 Report describes, there are numerous sound reasons for requiring notary journals. First, the journal is the notary’s official record of their performance of duties as a public official. Second, it provides admissible evidence of a properly performed notarial act in case the notary’s certificate of the act is lost or destroyed. Third, it reinforces required procedures, thereby encouraging notaries to perform notarial acts properly, deflecting pressure on employee-notaries to take shortcuts, and reducing the risks of forgery and other fraud. Fourth, it provides evidence that protects notaries from false accusations and unwarranted liability by evidencing their compliance with notarial requirements. Fifth, it may provide evidence that permits detection of notarial negligence or misconduct, thereby deterring both. Sixth, it may provide evidence that helps a victim obtain redress for forgery or other documentary fraud when it does occur.[4]

As explained in the Model Notary Act Comment to “Article 6—Notarial Records”: “[j]ournals serve the interests of principals and requesters, parties who rely upon those records, the public, government, law enforcement, the courts, and notaries themselves.”[5] And notarial experts universally recognize the value of properly kept notary journals for all these purposes.[6]

A December 2018 Report of the Grand Jury of the New York Supreme Court, First Judicial District recommends that notary journals be required to help combat rampant deed fraud and house theft.[7]  Notary journals also have been recognized as an important tool for helping law enforcement authorities track down forgers. National Notary Association Executive Director Tim Reiniger has stated: “Law enforcement. . .is coming to see the services of the Notary as an invaluable weapon in [the] widening war [on identity theft and document fraud].”[8]

Notary journaling is not just a good idea or best practice but has been recognized as a critical component of providing notarial services and protecting the integrity of notarized documents. “Journalizing…is mandated as a standard of reasonable care. The lack thereof is arguably a form of negligence. It is wrongful to think it is discretionary.”[9] Significantly, New York, 22 other states and the District of Columbia have all implemented that basic standard of care by writing the notary journaling requirement into law.

Notary journals protect notaries themselves by reminding them of and the need to follow step-by-step procedures for each notarization and enabling them to keep a record of each notarization for future reference. The requirement to make a contemporaneous journal entry of each notarial act thus serves the dual purpose of reminding notaries to perform their duties properly and creating a record of their diligent compliance with notarial standards and requirements.

III. NOTARY JOURNALS DO NOT IMPAIR ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE

The argument that keeping a notarial journal may violate attorney-client privilege confuses the role of the notary versus that of the lawyer. A notary is an official appointed by the Secretary of State and not subject to oversight by the Appellate Divisions. The information required for a journal entry is not privileged – and, if it were, disclosure to the notary, his, her or their official capacity for purposes of attestation would waive any potential privilege on the part of the person seeking the attestation.  Notaries are liable to any person injured by notarial malfeasance, whereas the attorney-client privilege runs only to the attorney’s client. If a lawyer-notary cannot perform a notarial duty because of a conflicting duty to a client, then that lawyer should exercise the discretion provided by Executive Law Section 135 and decline to serve as a notary in that specific instance. If there is a possibility that the notarial act would affect attorney client privilege, then it is the duty of the attorney to explain that to the attorney’s client so that the client can make an informed decision on the use of the attorney as the notary. But even if notarial recordkeeping conflicted with the attorney-client privilege, which it does not, that is no basis for exempting all non-attorney notaries from the requirement to keep a record of how they performed each of their official acts in their capacities as notaries.

IV. THE LEGISLATURE RECOGNIZES THE IMPORTANCE OF NOTARIAL RECORDKEEPING AS A BULWARK AGAINST FRAUD

In 2023, New York enacted a package of amendments to the real property actions and proceedings law, real property law, criminal procedure law, civil practice law and rules, and real property and procedures law all designed to protect vulnerable New Yorkers from an increasing wave of deed theft.^[10] As the Assembly Memorandum in support of that legislation recognized:

Deed theft perpetrators often target minority homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods because their property values have increased significantly and tend to single out those who are likely to be vulnerable to fraudulent schemes – preying on seniors and those facing financial hardship. Real property thieves target these individuals using a variety of schemes . . ., including the use of fraudulent signatures . . . to deceive homeowners into signing away their ownership.^[11]

Moreover, three months after the original version of the Journal Abolition Bill was introduced in 2024, the Senate approved S.5688-A, a bill intended to prevent the form of deed fraud known as “home theft.” That bill would require notaries to create and file with county clerks even more detailed records of notarizations of transfers of residential real estate than Section 182.9 requires, and it would impose substantial penalties on notaries who fail to comply.  In the current legislative session, three more bills have been introduced in the Legislature to combat deed fraud by strengthening notarial and other official recordkeeping requirements.^[12]

These legislative initiatives demonstrate the Legislature’s recognition of the vital importance of notarial recordkeeping to prevent forgery and fraud. The statement in the Sponsor Memo that notary journals “serve no legitimate purpose” is inconsistent with and refuted by these and other legislative actions.

V. THE JOURNALING REQUIREMENT IS NOT UNDULY BURDENSOME

Although a lawyer who is a notary may object to journal keeping as “unduly burdensome,” the attorney should be documenting the attorney’s services and whether serving as a notary, even if only to provide a record as a defense to a malpractice or fraud claim.  There is no evidence that notaries themselves object and no reason to exempt them from a key element of their duties as notarial officers of the State of New York. There is no evidence that the new journal requirement, which has already been in effect for nearly two years, has had any adverse effect on the community of New York’s professional notaries.  Given the existence of journal requirements in 22 other states and the District of Columbia, there is no reason to believe the journal keeping is an undue burden. The information required by Section 182.9 can be recorded in a notary journal in less than a minute.

Far from being an unnecessary burden as suggested in the Sponsor Memo, keeping a notary journal may be the single most important means a notary public – including a lawyer serving as a notary – can do to protect herself against false accusations of notarial misconduct.  As one leading notarial journal recently put it: “[t]he most important thing a Notary can do for protection is to keep a journal with meticulous detail. . . [A] well-kept journal can be your savior if you wind up in court answering questions about a signing that took place months or even years earlier, and you need evidence to show you did your job correctly.”[13]

A burden is undue only if the cost of the burden exceeds the value it provides. The proponents of the Bill do not provide any analysis of the “burden” allegedly caused by the regulation.  The cost to possess a journal is minimal.  The ink involved in keeping the journal and time devoted to collecting the necessary information is minimal.  However, the benefits of notarial recordkeeping described above are universally recognized. No compelling reason has been presented to suggest that the burden of creating such beneficial records outweighs their benefits.

***

For these reasons, the Committee respectfully urges the State Senate not to pass the Journal Abolition Bill.

Commercial Law and Uniform State Laws Committee
Gizem Alper, Chair

Reissued April 2026