I am a notary in the state of Oregon. I have been a notary since 1992 and I’m only on page 9 of my Notary Book. That means I don’t notarize very often.
You need a notary in a law office but in the case of our office, very rarely.
At the end of the summer I was looking for something in my desk and I noticed my notary stamp and I thought, “Oh hey, I haven’t notarized anything in forever. I wonder when my commission expires.”
Well, it expired 18 months earlier.
Oops. To save money Oregon no longer tells you when you expire and if you don’t renew before the expiration date, you have to do a 3 hour online training course. It was sort of a pain but I did learn a lot.
They tell you that when your commission expires you’re supposed to destroy your old stamp. Destroy it, what are you supposed to do? Get a sledgehammer?
The online training course, which is conducted by a robot voice, addresses this very question and says, “You do not have to get a sledgehammer to destroy your notary stamp.”
You can just peel of the stamp off and cut it with scissors.
I was a notary for five years and never once wrote in my book, despite notarizing hundreds of documents. HA! I never thought about destroying my expired stamp since it was expired. I guess people could have notarized things and pretended it was done in the past.