Certifying Documents

For those of you who aren't real familiar with the paperwork process, here's a run-down:

After your documents are collected and notarized, in Tennessee you must take each notarized document to the County Clerk's office in which the notary is bonded. The County Clerk then certifies the document. All this means is that they sign and stamp a letter which states that the notary is in fact a notary. After each document is certified, then you take the entire stack to the Secretary of State and have them authenticated which is a fancy name for certifying that the notary is certified. Overall, it's a really simple process but can be time-consuming if you use a lot of different notaries.

What is shocking is that when started on our first dossier in January of 2007, the County Clerk's fee was $2.00 per document. For our 2nd dossier, Rutherford County had raised the fee to $4.00 per document (this was in February 2008). Now, for our 3rd dossier, Rutherford County has increased the fees to a whopping $7.00 per page! Now, for what I would have originally paid $20.00, I am now going to have to pay $70.00!!!