Authentication and legalization of Canadian birth, marriage, divorce or death documents
English
Canada Legalization Services© offers the following services for Canadian birth, marriage, divorce or death documents:
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Apostille & authentication at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) or at the provincial levels;
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legalization at foreign Embassies/Consulates in Ottawa and Toronto (or in Washington, DC and New York City for countries that do not have consular presence in Canada).
Such services may be required for various reasons such as immigration to foreign country, overseas employment, marriage to a foreign national, purchase of real estate property or other legal actions abroad.
Some of such documents can be apostilled or authenticated as originals if they were issued by relevant provincial governments while in other cases prior notarization may be required (especially, when clients wish to process certified true copies that need to be notarized by a Canadian notary public. For example, original long-form birth, marriage or death certificates issued by the office of vital statistics (mainly signed by the Deputy Registrar or Registrar General) of the relevant province or territory can be authenticated without notarization. Plastic, wallet-sized versions of these certificates cannot be apostilled or authenticated as well as religious documents or funeral home death certificates (even if they were notarized).
Global Affairs of Canada also requires that marriage search documents issued by the Province of Ontario must be notarized. Divorce certificates, divorce orders and divorce judgments must also bear the original signature of the relevant court clerk or registrar as well as the court seal or stamp.
It is important to remember that notary's name, signature, seal and commission details must be legible.
How to Use Our Services
Our fees for authentication and legalization services are posted here. Please contact us or request a quote for our authentication and legalization services. Usually, we request our clients to email us the scans of the documents prior mailing us the documents that need processing and advise us the return address for documents. At an extra charge we can arrange for translation and notarization. We can also courier the documents internationally to any country but we will need all the details to estimate the courier charges. We provide volume-based discounts for many documents that need certification.