Apostilles and Legalizations

What are apostilles and legalizations, and when do you need them?

If you need to provide documents to a foreign country, you also need to understand when apostilles are necessary and when you may be faced with the more prolonged legalization process. Knowing the facts will help you avoid time-consuming research and costly mistakes.

Apostilles

Often, before a public document can be used in a country other than the one that issued it, its origin must be authenticated. To facilitate this, many countries have joined a treaty that simplifies the process of authentication. The full name of this treaty is the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents. It is more commonly known as the Apostille Convention.

An apostille is a certificate that authenticates the origin of a public document according to the rules of this convention. Apostilles can only be issued when:

• The public documents to be apostilled are issued by a country that is party to the Apostille Convention.
• The public documents to be apostilled are to be used in another country which is also party to the Apostille Convention.

An apostille only certifies the origin of the public document. It does not certify the content of the public document.

The Apostille Convention applies only to public documents. Some examples of these are birth, marriage and death certificates; court documents; patents; diplomas and more. As a requirement of the convention, member countries must designate one or more authorities to issue apostilles. These are known as Competent Authorities. If you aren't certain whether your document is a public document, you can contact the appropriate Competent Authority of the country that issued the document.

An apostille must be placed directly on the public document itself, or on a separate attached document. This attachment is called an allonge. It can be affixed as a rubber stamp, a sticker, an impressed seal, etc.

If an apostille is placed on an allonge, it can be attached to the underlying public document with glue, grommets, staples, ribbons, wax seals, or by other means. There are no specific rules for how to attach the allonge.

Legalizations

The process for authenticating public documents which are to be used in other countries when the Apostille Convention does not apply is called legalization. (British spelling, legalisation.)

This process may consist of several individual authentications of the document, involving officials of the country where the document was issued and officials from the consulate or foreign embassy of the country where the document will be used.

Because many officials may be involved, the legalization process is usually time-consuming, expensive and inefficient.