[Tsmom]

I was planning on using my agencies paper processing plan "Dragon Plan" GWCA. I just read that there is a 6 month window to authenticate. What have your time frames been for certifing anuthenticating? I can walk in all but 2 docs which are both going to other states, and 1 needs to be certified twice because it is from VA.

[GoingtoChina]

I did all our certifying and authenticating on my own. It was a piece of cake. I had to deal with two different Secretary of States and two different Consulates because my BC is from CA and the rest of our documents are in FL.

My CA Birth Certificate:
Mailed to CA Sec of State on 12/04/04
Received it back on 12/21/04
Sent it to Consulate in SF on 12/22/04
Received it from being authenticated on 1/3/05

The remainder of my documents (except 171H):
Mailed to FL Sec of State on 12/29/04
Received it back from being certified on 1/5/05
Mailed it to Houston Consulate on 1/7/05
Received it from being authenticated on 1/19/05

** I didn't do a rush service on any of the above. The only document that I rushed was my last one which was the 171H. I used a courier for that. So the timing on the 171H was:
Mailed to FL Sec of State on 2/16/05
Received it from being certified on 2/19/05
Mailed to courier on 2/19/05 (Holiday weekend so she didn't get it until the following Tuesday which was 2/22/05).
Received it from being authenticated on 2/25/05

** Keep in mind that depending on the Consulate and/or Sec of State... you may or may not be able to do a rush service. Houstons consulate, you can do a 4 day rush or an overnight rush (for an extra $20 per document) ONLY if you hand carry the documents in (or have a courier hand carry them in). If you have to mail your documents in, then there is no rush service available.

Hope that helps!

K

[Tsmom]

Thanks for your help! I think I may do it myself now.

[Lissa]

Wow 6 months???that's pretty lengthy. I did the whole from Notarization to Authentication in 3 weeks. We notarized as we went, but had no idea we had to get county certification before state certification until we got to the state process--that's the only reason it even took that long.

[Tsmom]

I had not heard of county certification. Is this because of the state you live in? How would I find this information on my state?

[Mailbox13]

Hey! You can determine if you have to have county certification of the notary by going to your states Secretary of States website. It should tell you the steps it requires for the great seal to be attached(cerification). If I remember correctly you said you were using GWCA, they have a link to all the SOS websites.

[Lissa]

Our agency was of no help to us here, we had to find out through the Secretary of State's Website. If your state soesn't have a website or it is confusing. (thankfully Ky's was very user friendly, but I've seen others that are very convoluted) you can call their office and find out. What county certification entailed was finding out where all our notaries were certified and then going to their county clerk's office and having documentation attached that proved they were notaries. Basically in KY the Sec. of State does not keep that information on file, it's handled at the county level. Also because my state uses the DC consulate we had to be cetrified by the State Dept. as well. So we had plenty of extra steps. The State Dept. thing sounds like a big deal, but it's not...only takes 1/2 a day to complete. The county certification CAN be a big deal if your notaries are from all over the place. Our notaries were in 3 different counties and thankfully the furthest was only an hour away. But seriously the hardest part wasn't the SOS, or the State Dept or the Chinese Consulate...the hardest and most time consuming part was the county thing and it still only took us about 3 weeks to get the whole thing done...and that's with both of us working full time. It's really not that hard, you spend a lot of time getting to know the fed-ex people, but otherwise, it's pretty straightforward process.

[suse151]

I used a dossier service and did some of it myself. It should not take 6 mths at all. They may be factoring in ordering all birth certif., etc. and police rpts (which can sometimes take a little longer). However, once you have the docs, even with county certification, it only takes about a week, 2 at the most to get them back. If you can hand-carry them to the county or state - they'll do them while you wait. If not (I had to have one doc county and state certified for NC) - they got it back so fast. It only took 1 week total (with the county mailing it back to me and me sending it back out to s.o.s. and the s.o.s. mailing it to me).

I also had KY sos and TN sos and they got it back in 2-3 days. For GA, I hand-carried them to two counties and the SOS office. No problems. Just be sure to get a fed ex account - it makes all the difference in the world!

susan

[VAMom2Be]

Quick question - Do the authentications/Certifications expire? We're waiting on 171H - would you start this process now?

[Mailbox13]

The certification/authentication does not expire. How long until you expect to get the 171? If it is going to be a little while then, I would definitely go ahead and get the SOS certification. Watch out on the Authentication from the Consulate. Some Consulates won't Authenticate some docs that are over 6 months old.

[SummerMommy]

I didn't do any of my authentication at all. I just turned in my docuements to my agency and walked away. They guarantee we'll be DTC the next month if we get our documents in by the 5th of the month.

Authentication was included at no extra charge. They also translated our documents before they submitted them to CCAA. Using this agency was one of the best choices we ever made.

All agencies are pretty much the same but some do some things better than others. Even so, very few members of any agency have regrets about their choice.

Summer

[VAMom2Be]

Thanks MB13,

Home study will be completed mid-April, fingerprints at the same time. Optimistically, we're hoping for the 171 around June. I have 4 states to deal with, but 3 are within a few hours drive.

[prechrswife]

<<For GA, I hand-carried them to two counties and the SOS office.>>

Did you have to call ahead when you hand-carried your documents to the Georgia SOS?

[Liz0811]

6 months is a long time. We did ours ourselves and it was not bad at all and it was much faster than that. We live in NY and had to do the county authentications as well, but it was not that big of a deal.

[Sean&Shan]

We had the great seal put on our BC right after we requested them since they were from across the country. You get notarized documents certified in the county in which your notary lives, not where they work or where the notary seal was put on. We had to got to the clerk of the courts in 3 different counties. It literally took minutes to get done, the drive took much longer.
We took all of our docs to the SOS ourselves, again, finding a parking space was more difficult and took longer than getting the great seals attached. Our agency sends docs to the consulate for authentication (we have to go to 3!) but did not charge us a fee.

I found the paperchase in general to be much easier than I predicted. I just found the wait for fingerprints and background checks to be frustrating. I'm too type A to have the timelines out of my control, but my mother insists it is just training for our daughter who will also have her own timeline and control issues!