Terms and Conditions

1          Notarial Practice

Tranah Notary is a notarial practice owned and managed by RTTN Legal Limited, CRN:14414137, Registered Office 123 Castle Road, Salisbury, Wiltshire, United Kingdom SP1 3RP (called “TN” in these terms and conditions of business and references to “we” “us” or “our” are construed accordingly in these terms and conditions of business).

2          Application

These terms and conditions, read in conjunction with our email of engagement, form the basis of the contract for notarial services between TN and you (the person(s) signing or the company for whom the person(s) signs at the end of these terms and conditions (and references to “you” are construed accordingly in these terms and conditions of business).

3          Responsibility and Duty

Our responsibility and duty is to the transaction as a whole.  Notarial acts are relied upon by individuals, third parties, foreign governments and officials worldwide.

Our responsibility is limited to notarial formalities so that we must be satisfied that you understand the general content of any document and that you intend to be bound by it.   We do not give any legal advice in relation to any document nor advice or guarantee as to its suitability for use in the jurisdiction intended.   We recommend that you obtain first the advice of your own independent legal or other competent professional advisor who practises or is skilled in the law of the jurisdiction to which any document is to be sent.

We do not accept responsibility for documents once sent to the FCDO and/or Embassy/and or business agent for legalisation or dispatched to you either in terms of their safe custody or timing of their return as these matters are outside our control.

4          Proof of Identity

Your identification is an important aspect of our notarial practice in accordance with the law, regulation and  our  professional rules.    Our engagement letter/email will set out the particular requirements in your matter.

5          Written Translation

Where we do not have knowledge of the language in which a document is written, official translations may be required.  We can obtain these subject to your payment of the translation fees.

6          Fees and disbursements

Our fees are based on various criteria (including time, value, complexity, urgency and the importance of our work to you).  We will notify you in our engagement letter of our fees for   dealing with your matter and where these cannot be fixed in advance, how they will accrue.  We charge VAT on our fees.

All disbursements (which are payments that we make to third parties on your behalf, such as translation fees, legalisation fees paid to the FCDO and/or an Embassy, legalisation agents’ fees, Company’s House fees, courier fees and special delivery postage charges) are your responsibility in addition to our fees.

7          Payment and release of documents

Payment of fees and/or disbursements is due on presentation of our invoice by bank transfer, cheque, cash or card. We reserve the right to charge interest, at the rate from time to time applicable to judgment debts, on amounts unpaid after thirty days from delivery of our invoice.

Notarised documents will only be released upon payment of fees and disbursements in full.

8          Records

At the end of the matter, and subject to the requirements of notarial professional rules, a  formal entry of the main details of your transaction in will be entered in our notarial register and copies of the notarised documents and your identification will be retained.    Notarial professional rules currently require that a paper or digital copy of a “notarial act in public form” is kept permanently and a copy of any other notarial act for a minimum period of 12 years.

When the notarial practice ceases, then our records will be transferred either to another notary approved by the Master of the Faculties or to an archive designated by the Master of the Faculties.

9          Confidentiality under the Data Protection Act 1998

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, your personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully and cannot be processed without your consent. Additionally, in the case of the process of sensitive personal data (for example, race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs and physical and mental health) we may only process this if further pre-conditions are met. Please refer to our Data Protection Privacy Notice.

You accept that we can take and retain a copy of your ID for as long as is necessary in accordance with legislation. However, you confirm that we may disclose your personal data if required to do so by law, regulation, notarial professional rules, our auditor, our insurer or advisors.  For example, you accept that notarial professional rules currently provide that a copy of a notarial act retained by us or the record of it may be issued to any person or authority having a proper interest in it.

You also confirm that we may disclose personal data during the course of using external agencies for translation, typing and printing.

10        E-mail

Unless you specifically instruct us in writing to the contrary, if you communicate with us by e-mail or you print an e-mail address on any correspondence we receive, we will assume you have no objection to us communicating by un-encrypted email and that you have satisfied yourself about any security issues.  Additionally, unless you specifically instruct us in writing to the contrary, we reserve the right to communicate with any other party in a matter for which we act for you by using un-encrypted e-mail.

11        Termination of instructions

You may terminate your instructions at any time by giving us notice in writing and we will only charge you for the fees, VAT and disbursements incurred up to the date of termination.

We may decline to accept instructions or discontinue acting if you are overdue in making payment of fees, VAT and/or disbursements, if you fail to give us clear or proper instructions or if you give instructions that may conflict with the law, regulation or our professional rules.

12        Complaints

We are confident that we will provide you with a good service, but if you do have reason to complain the following information sets out the procedure to follow.

Tranah Notary is a notarial practice regulated through the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury:

The Faculty Office, 1 The Sanctuary, Westminster, London SW1P 3JT

t: 020 7222 5381

e: Faculty.office@1thesanctuary.com

website: facultyoffice.org.uk.

If you are dissatisfied about the service you have received, please do not hesitate to contact us.   We will work hard to resolve this quickly, fairly and amicably.   If, however, we cannot resolve this, then you may complain to the Notaries Society, which operates a Complaints Procedure approved by the Faculty Office.  This procedure is free to use and is designed to provide a quick resolution to any dispute.

In that case please write (but do not enclose any original documents) with full   details concerning your complaint to the Secretary:

The Notaries Society, P O Box 1023 Ipswich, IP1 9XB.

e: secretary@thenotariessociety.org.uk,

 website: www.notariessociety.com

If you have any difficulty making a complaint in writing, please do not hesitate to call the Notaries Society or the Faculty Office for assistance.

Finally, even if you have your complaint considered under the Complaints Procedure, you may at the end of that procedure or after a period of eight weeks from the date you first notified us that you were dissatisfied, make your complaint to the Legal Ombudsman, if you are not happy with the result:

The Legal Ombudsman, P O Box 6806, Wolverhampton WV1 9WS

t: 0300 555 0333

e: enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk

website: www.legalombudsman.org.uk

If you decide to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman you must refer your matter to the Legal Ombudsman within one year from the act/omission or within one year from when you should reasonably have known there was cause for complaint.

13        Indemnity Insurance and Liability

We maintain professional indemnity insurance cover with a minimum of £1 million and and details of the insurer and territorial coverage of the policy are available for inspection.

Except only to the extent that the law does not permit us to exclude or limit our liability, our total liability in connection with or arising directly or indirectly from this matter is limited to an aggregate of £1 million.  This limit covers all claims of any sort whatsoever whether arising in contract, negligence or otherwise and all losses or damages including interest, costs and expenses.

All liability arising out of legal actions instituted within the jurisdiction of the United States of America and/or Canada is excluded.

14        Governing Law

The terms of our relationship with you will be governed by English law and are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.