2 2 . AFTER THE NOTARY PROTEST
There is one other document you should request from the Notary after the protest, and
that is a printout from the Secretary of State's Office web site where the notary is
commissioned which shows that the Notary is in good standing with a current commission.
There may be a nominal fee for accessing the web site. You can also look for this
information on your own. This is a preventative measure so that if you should come to a
circumstance where the lender questions whether or not a notary with a proper
commission performed the protest, you already have the apostilles in your "bag of
evidence" to prove it was a viable notarial protest.
Perfecting the Process
Now that you have the original Certificate of Dishonor and Non-Response with Notary
Notes from the Notary, if you wish, you can set the stage to enforce the contract they
entered into with you. You have 90 days1 in which to send three bills for the contractual
amounts in your CA. The billing must be at least 10 days apart. Itemize the amounts. If
they are continuing to send you “offers” or if a bill collector is still trying to “collect” on
the account which has already been settled, you may wish to file a complaint with your
local Attorney General and the appropriate Federal agencies, depending on whether it is
against a credit card company or a credit reporting agency.
You have three avenues available to you:
1) The private administrative tribunal - The private administrative tribunal
consists of at least three independent judges (private citizens with knowledge
of notarial protest) review your documents and verify that you have followed
all the procedural requirements. The private judges can then issue Findings of
Fact and you now have a judicial finding; or
2) Getting Notarial Judicial Review – you must enter the documents for a superior
court judge in your county, in his judicial capacity and not his “ministerial”
capacity, to review the procedure, the time of the notices and your service of the
notices by you and the notary, so that you can obtain a court order for
enforcement and damages. You will need a local notary’s certificate if you used
an out-of-state notary for the process2. The local notary will simply review the
process and issue a certificate stating that the process was proper. After the
judicial review and findings of fact, then you can obtain a Writ of Execution and
obtain a “keeper” (marshal or sheriff) on their “toys” to either take them away for
the amount of the court order or sell them at public auction; or
If you wait longer than 90 days to do your billing, simply get a current Certificate of Dishonor from
the Notary.
We know that you may have difficulty finding a “res” state notary to review the documents if you had
to use an out-of-state notary to perform the protest. There is no time limit on when you get a "res"
state notary to review the process. We are accumulating the names, emails and phone numbers of
notaries nationwide who are familiar with notarial protest. If you can add to the list, please forward
the information to us to add to the “Notary List” in the files.
3) Obtain Judicial Review from the Appropriate Court. Depending on the
“citizenship” or “res” of both you and the alleged lender, you can file an action
for Judicial Review with the your state court, Federal District Court or the Federal
Court of Claims. If the “res” of both you and the lender is in your state, you can
file in your state court. If the lender is a foreign corporation, you can file at
Federal District Court. You also have the option of The Federal Court of Claims,
where “foreign judgments” are enforced. The private side is “foreign” to the
public side. Your conditional acceptance and the notary protest was private.
Remember that the notary process is outside the box so it is foreign to the
maritime/admiralty courts. It is no different than having a judgment in France and
trying to enforce here…it has to go thru the Federal Court of Claims for foreign
judgments.
All three processes do not review the substance of the documents, but only weigh the
procedure – the form – whether or not you and the notary met the notice and time
requirements, etc. and not the components of the contract. You cannot argue or testify or
address whether or not the instrument you offer in exchange was valid, whether the debt
was valid or allow any topic other than the judicial review of the notarial protest to be
addressed in any of the three processes. We will be adding forms for these processes
soon.
After you have your court order, you may also wish to file a UCC-1 with your local
county recorder with the entire packet attached, including your bill of exchange. And
don’t forget about those credit reporting companies, they must adhere to the Fair Credit
Reporting Act or you can turn them in for criminal prosecution by the Federal Trade
Commission. Now that you have a contract, if you choose to force an involuntary
bankruptcy to collect, it’s up to you!
P.S. - After you receive your Certificates of Dishonor and Non-Performance or Breach of
Contract, you should bill the “Respondent” the amounts agreed to in the Conditional
Acceptance self-executing contract. Send a minimum of three statements/bills. The case
can now be filed in the appropriate court for enforcement of the judgment made of the
evidence by the Notary.