Certified for the country it's going to. Served 123 LLC routes U.S. documents to the right Secretary of State or to the U.S. Department of State, checked before submission, and returned tracked.
People are often surprised by this one, and it's better to know before you order than after a foreign office hands the document back.
Tell us the destination country and the document. Those two answers decide the route.
The form asks for the country, the count and a return address — not these.
It depends on the destination country.
Tell us the country on the form and it's confirmed before any work starts.
We complete the U.S. side: state certification where needed, then Department of State authentication.
The package is then prepared for that country's embassy or consulate, with a referral for the legalisation step. Worth knowing before you order, so the last leg isn't a surprise.
Not where you live — where the document came from.
A New York birth certificate goes to New York whether you're in Texas or Tokyo.
For a notarised document, the apostille follows the notary, so it goes to the state where the notarisation happened — and the commission has to have been valid on the day.
A birth certificate, a notarised power of attorney and an FBI check take three different paths through three different offices — which is why the document type decides the route.
A certified copy from the issuing state's vital records office — and a recent one, because many destinations reject old copies.
Where a fresh certified copy is needed first, that gets arranged.
Sometimes. Several states require county-clerk certification of the notary before the Secretary of State will act — and that step is handled rather than discovered.
The notarised original is what goes forward, and the notary's commission has to have been valid on the day.
Yes. Federal documents are apostilled by the U.S. Department of State — the only authority that can certify a federal document — and returned tracked.
If you don't have an FBI Identity History Summary yet, it can be obtained through a channeler first. Say so and it's handled as one job rather than two.
Sometimes, and it depends entirely on the destination.
Send anything the consulate, registrar or employer has told you they want, and the sequence gets worked out before anything is submitted. Where the requirement is one only the destination can answer, you'll be told that plainly rather than guessed at.
That's the issuing authority's answer, not ours — and it's the honest reason you won't find a number on this page.
State Secretaries of State vary enormously from one state to the next, some offer an expedited tier and some don't, and the U.S. Department of State moves with its own backlog.
Authority and shipping fees are third-party costs, so they run through a separate retainer: set with your quote, drawn down against the actual charges, and reconciled after — refunded if it comes in under, billed if it runs over.
They are not part of the service fee. Nothing is charged until you approve the quote.
Usually it's the document, not the application.
You get the exact reason in plain terms — an expired commission, a missing county certification, the wrong kind of copy — and what it takes to correct it, with any further cost quoted before it's spent.
That's also why the package is checked before submission rather than after: an apostille on the wrong version is a wasted apostille.
It happens, and it's worth being straight about.
An apostille is what the receiving country asked the United States to provide — but the office at the other end sets its own rules on recency, format and supporting documents. A correctly issued apostille can't override those.
It's the reason we ask what the destination has already told you before anything is submitted.
Your office, your client, counsel overseas, or straight to the destination country by tracked international courier.
Shipping is quoted with everything else rather than appearing later.
The form asks for the destination country, the document count and a return address. It doesn't ask for the four things that actually decide the route:
Put them in with your order and the quote comes back in one pass instead of three emails.
Yes to both.
Either way it's handled as one job rather than two orders — which also means the certification is matched to the destination before the retrieval happens, not after.
Tell us the destination country and the document — those two answers decide the route.
Back comes the chain, the scope, the fee retainer and realistic timing in writing. Nothing is charged until you approve the quote.
An apostille on the wrong version is a wasted apostille. Most of what goes wrong is visible before submission.
