Maryland Notary Public Exam Preparation: The Course and Examination, Prepared Properly

The Maryland Notary Public commission is a four-year, statewide public appointment under Title 18 of the State Government Article: the Governor appoints and commissions notaries public on the approval the statute prescribes, and the Secretary of State administers the program through its Notary Division. Since October 1, 2021, an initial applicant must have completed the course of study and passed the examination offered under § 18-102 — a package delivered by providers authorized by the Secretary of State, in which the examination contains at least 20 questions in a multiple-choice format and the applicant must correctly answer at least 80 percent of the questions in order to be issued a Certificate of Passing. A renewal applicant completes the course of study; no renewal examination is imposed by the statute. The two certificates a new applicant files — a Certificate of Completion for the course and a Certificate of Passing for the examination — are the gate this program prepares candidates for.

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What this commission is

A Maryland notary public is a public officer of the State, commissioned to perform notarial acts anywhere in Maryland — the Secretary of State’s guidance is explicit that a commissioned notary may notarize anywhere in the State regardless of the county of commission, and may act only while physically present in Maryland. The office sits inside a two-layer legal structure. The statute, Title 18 of the State Government Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland, governs appointment, qualifications, application, term, and discipline in its first subtitle, and carries the Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts in its second. The regulations, COMAR Title 01, Subtitle 02, Chapter 08, govern the working detail the Secretary of State administers: the fees a notary may charge, the authorized course-of-study and examination providers, and the standards their courses and examinations must meet. The Secretary of State’s Handbook for Maryland Notaries Public is the program’s own text, and COMAR builds the mandated course and examination directly on it.

The gate itself dates from October 1, 2021, and its structure is the first thing a candidate must understand, because Maryland is not a test-center state. Section 18-102(b) provides that the Secretary of State regularly shall offer a course of study and an examination covering the laws, regulations, procedures, and ethics relevant to notarial acts, and that the course and examination may be offered through an entity approved by the Secretary of State. In operation, an applicant takes the course from a provider on the Secretary of State’s published list of authorized course of study and examination providers, and — as a new applicant — takes that provider’s examination as the second half of the same package. The provider issues a Certificate of Completion when the course is completed and a Certificate of Passing when the examination standard is met, and both certificates are filed electronically with the online application. There is no separate state sitting to schedule, no state examination hall, and no state-set appointment window: the examination is the course provider’s examination, built to COMAR’s published standards. The companion Maryland Notary Public Exam Guide sets out the law, the route, and the package in detail.

One Maryland-only step shapes the rest of the route, and no template from another state supplies it. Under § 18-101, the Governor appoints and commissions a resident applicant on approval of the application by a Senator representing the senatorial district and subdistrict in which the applicant resides — unless that Senator has delegated approval authority to the Secretary of State, in which case the Secretary of State’s approval supports the appointment. The Secretary of State’s application process therefore asks every applicant to find the legislative district number and the name of their Senator, and the determination on a new application is made by the applicant’s State Senator or by the Secretary of State where authority has been delegated. That determination, the background check behind it, and the thirty-day oath clock that follows approval are all part of the route this program teaches alongside the examination material itself.

The commission at a glance

What the course and examination cover

COMAR publishes no topic weights for the examination, and this page prints none. What COMAR publishes is the examinable scope and the sourcing rule, and both are exact. The course of study shall include the Maryland Notary Public laws, regulations, ethics, procedures, and the Handbook for Maryland Notaries Public (Regulation .16A). The examination’s design must offer each applicant a mix of questions of comparable difficulty to every other applicant, sourced from each of the sections in the Handbook covering the laws, regulations, ethics, and procedures (Regulation .16B), and each question must be relevant to the requirements of the Maryland notary public laws, regulations, ethics, procedures, and/or the Handbook (Regulation .16D). The areas below follow that scope as the Secretary of State’s own guidance organises it — the Handbook’s parts the Secretary of State’s FAQ directs candidates to are named as such — because the Handbook is the text both halves of the package are built on.

The office and the commission: Title 18, Subtitle 1

The opening ground is the commission itself: who may hold it, and on what terms. The qualifications in § 18-102(a) — age, character and integrity, the residence-or-employment connection, the senatorial-district residence rule for an applicant living in the State, and the reciprocal-residence rule for an applicant living outside it — are examinable law, not application trivia, because the course covers the laws that govern the office and the application tests them in operation. Around the qualifications sit the appointment mechanics of § 18-101, the application, term, renewal, and revocation provisions of § 18-103, and the discipline standard of § 18-104 as the Secretary of State states it: on behalf of the Governor, the Secretary of State may deny, refuse to renew, revoke, suspend, or impose conditions on a commission for any act or omission demonstrating that the individual lacks the honesty, integrity, competence, or reliability to act as a notary public — including failure to comply with Title 18 or its regulations, a fraudulent, dishonest, or deceitful misstatement or omission in the application, a conviction of a felony or of a crime involving fraud, dishonesty, or deceit, failure to discharge a duty required of a notary public, and false or misleading advertising of a duty, right, or privilege the notary does not hold. The Secretary of State’s process adds the practical edge: a background check is conducted on each application, and an applicant who does not accurately report criminal convictions and civil judgments will be denied.

Identification, competence, and refusal — Handbook Part IV

The Secretary of State’s FAQ directs candidates to Part IV of the Handbook for proper identification, competency and awareness, and duress, and those three subjects are the examination’s judgement core. A Maryland notary serves anyone who makes a lawful request unless the notary determines the person lacks competency or awareness or is under duress; the most frequent reasons to deny a notarization, as the Secretary of State publishes them, are that the signer cannot be satisfactorily identified, does not appear competent or aware, or is under duress — and a notary may also refuse where the notarization would result in an illegal or improper act or where the notary knows the transaction is fraudulent. Identification itself is recorded, not merely performed: the journal entry for each act must state whether identity rested on personal knowledge, and, where it rested on satisfactory evidence, must briefly describe the method of identification and the credential presented, including its issuance and expiration dates and its identification number. A candidate who learns identification as a checklist of documents, without the refusal judgement and the record that must follow it, has learned half the item.

Certificates and the acts themselves — Handbook Parts VII and VIII

Since October 1, 2020, Maryland law requires a certificate for each and every notarial act, with a different type of notarial certificate for each type of act; where the record carries no certificate, the notarial officer must affix one by securely attaching it to the record. The Secretary of State’s guidance is equally clear about the boundary of the notary’s hand: a notary is not authorised to review a personal document for accuracy and completeness or to edit or complete a document on a signer’s behalf — the only part of a document the notary completes is the notarial certificate explaining the notary’s action — while correcting the state and county on a pre-printed certificate is acceptable, the county being the county where the notary is located at the time of the notarization. Part VIII addresses each type of notarial act, including the power, effective October 1, 2020, to certify a copy of a record in someone’s possession. Two prohibitions frame the whole area: a notary may not perform a notarial act on a record to which the notary or the notary’s spouse is a party or in which either has a direct beneficial interest — § 18-203(b), with an act in violation voidable — and no other professional licence confers notarial authority, the law’s notarial officers being a notary public of the State, a judge, clerk, or deputy clerk of a court of the State, or a magistrate appointed by a court of the State.

The stamp and the journal

The working instruments are prescribed in detail, and the detail is examinable. The official stamp — an ink stamp or embosser, or an electronic device or process, in every case capable of being copied together with the record — must include the notary’s name as it appears on the commission, the words “Notary Public,” and the county (or Baltimore City) in which the notary was commissioned, with the commission expiration date included unless it is part of the notarial certificate or otherwise affixed to or associated with the record. The device is the notary’s own property and responsibility even if an employer purchased it; no other individual may use it; a lost or stolen device is promptly reported to the Secretary of State; and the device is disabled — destroyed, defaced, damaged, erased, or secured against use — on resignation, revocation, or expiration of the commission. The journal is mandatory in form as the Secretary of State states it: each notary maintains a journal chronicling each notarial act, each entry made contemporaneously with the act and containing the date and time, a description of the record and the type of act, the full name and address of each individual for whom the act is performed, the personal-knowledge statement or the satisfactory-evidence description, the fee charged or an indication that no fee was charged, and an indication whether the individual appeared in the notary’s physical presence or remotely by communication technology. The journal is retained for ten years after the performance of the last notarial act contained in it.

Fees a commissioned notary may charge — COMAR 01.02.08.02

The fee schedule is regulation text, effective in its current form January 22, 2024, and it is stated here exactly as COMAR publishes it because fee items are a standing examination subject and a daily practice limit. A notary may demand and receive no more than $8 for the performance of a notarial act, or $30 for the performance of a remote notarial act. For more than one copy of the same record signed at the same time by the same person or persons, the notary may receive $8 for notarizing each signature on the original or first copy and $4 for each signature on each additional copy. Reproductions of a notarized record or a journal entry, by photocopying or other means, are capped at $2 for each copy furnished; certifying a copy of a record in the notary’s journal is $6; and travel, where required for the performance of a notarial act, is reimbursed at the prevailing Internal Revenue Service mileage rate for business travel plus a fee not to exceed $5. These are the fees a commissioned notary may collect for acts performed — a different schedule from the State’s application and handbook charges and from any provider’s course charges, and the three are never merged on this page.

Electronic and remote notarization — Handbook Parts IX and X, as a boundary

Two later layers sit on top of a current commission, and this program treats both as boundaries rather than as part of the initial gate. Electronic notarization, lawful under the Maryland Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, still requires the personal appearance of the signer in the notary’s physical presence. Remote notarization, lawful since October 1, 2020, allows appearance by communication technology instead, and runs through the Secretary of State’s remote notary process: the commissioned notary completes the remote notary notification form, selects the kind or kinds of remote acts to be performed — remote acts on electronic records using an authorised remote online notary vendor, and/or remote acts using other communication technology — and receives confirmation of authorisation where the form is complete and an authorised vendor is selected. Neither layer changes the initial applicant’s course-and-examination package, and neither is presented here as a second examination.

The route, in order

Step 1 — Confirm the qualifications, and order and review the Handbook

The threshold is § 18-102(a): at least 18 years old; of good moral character and integrity; a resident of Maryland or holding a place of employment or practice in Maryland; if living in Maryland, a resident of the senatorial district from which appointed; if living outside Maryland, a resident of a state that allows Maryland residents working in that state to serve as notaries public there. No category of applicant is excused from the initial package in the sources read — there is no attorney exemption in § 18-102, COMAR 01.02.08, or the Secretary of State’s pages — so every initial applicant plans for both the course and the examination. The Secretary of State’s first published step is the text itself: order the Handbook for Maryland Notaries Public ($30 from the Secretary of State) and review it. COMAR requires the provider’s instructions to tell the applicant how to access the current Handbook, because the course covers it and the examination is sourced from its sections.

Step 2 — Complete the course of study with an authorised provider

Choose a provider from the Secretary of State’s published list of authorised course of study and examination providers, effective October 1, 2021. COMAR sets what the provider must be and must do: an authorised provider meets the qualification criteria of Regulation .14, including at least three years’ demonstrated experience and knowledge in developing and administering a course of study and examination and demonstrated proficiency with Maryland notary law, regulations, ethics, policies and procedures, and the Handbook; it offers the course virtually or in person — virtual including a synchronous or asynchronous online course — accessibly to all Maryland applicants and renewal applicants; and for every applicant who completes the course of study, it gives a Certificate of Completion at the end of the course (Regulation .15C–D). The certificate is a filing item: an electronic copy is submitted with the online application, so completion means the certificate in hand.

Step 3 — Pass the provider’s examination and receive the Certificate of Passing

The examination is the second half of the same provider package, built to Regulation .16: at least 20 questions, clearly stated in a multiple-choice format, each with four answers and only one correct, drawn from a provider bank of at least 50 different questions so that repeat applicants do not receive a statistically sufficient number of previously attempted questions, sourced from each Handbook section covering the laws, regulations, ethics, and procedures, with each question relevant to those requirements. The passing standard is COMAR’s, in COMAR’s words: each applicant must correctly answer at least 80 percent of the questions in order to be issued a Certificate of Passing under Regulation .15E. Scoring is immediate — the testing system notifies the applicant of passing or failure at the conclusion of the examination session. An applicant who completed the course but scored below that standard is qualified to retest, and the provider shall provide an opportunity to retest. On a pass, the provider gives the Certificate of Passing, and its electronic copy joins the Certificate of Completion in the application that follows. PassProfessor is not an authorised provider: this program prepares a candidate for that examination; it issues neither certificate and satisfies no part of the state requirement itself.

Step 4 — Apply online, with both certificates, your identification, and your Senator’s determination

The application is filed online through the Secretary of State’s system, on the Secretary of State’s forms and sworn to by the applicant, with the $25 Maryland application fee. The Secretary of State’s checklist of what an applicant needs is part of the route’s discipline: the legislative district of residence, found through the Maryland General Assembly’s lookup; a copy of a driver’s licence or other valid government-issued identification, with an MVA Change of Address Card where the address on the identification does not match the application; contact information for three references; and copies of the Certificate of Completion and the Certificate of Passing. The name on the commission must match the name on the government-issued photo identification — nicknames cannot be used — and the home address is required and verified, because a Maryland resident is commissioned in the county of residence; an applicant living outside Maryland but working in Maryland is commissioned in the county of employment or practice. On submission, the Secretary of State receives the application the next business day and reviews it for completion and a valid home address; a background check follows, directed at whether convictions and civil judgments were accurately disclosed — inaccurate reporting means denial. The determination to approve or deny is then made by the applicant’s State Senator, or by the Secretary of State where the Senator has delegated approval authority; where the Secretary of State determines, references are emailed directly and must respond before the application proceeds. The Secretary of State’s published timing for a new application is a 15-minute application and a determination in the range the Notary Division publishes on its applicant page.

Step 5 — Qualify before the clerk of the circuit court within 30 days

Approval starts the route’s hardest clock. The approved applicant is notified by email and instructed to appear at the Clerk of the Circuit Court in the county of commission; within 30 days of that notification the notary takes the oath of office before the clerk and pays the clerk’s charges — $10.00 for the commission and $1.00 registration fee, separate from the application fee — as § 18-103(d) requires qualification within 30 days after the notice of appointment. The consequence of missing the window is stated without qualification in both the statute and the Secretary of State’s process: the appointment and commission of a notary who fails to qualify and pay the fees within the time required are revoked, and an applicant whose commission is revoked for failure to appear must reapply with a new application and another application fee — subject only to the statute’s provision that the Secretary of State may reinstate an appointment and commission for good cause shown. After the clerk swears the notary in, the commission is delivered by email, and the holder is an official Notary Public for the State of Maryland. Maryland issues no commission number: a notary is identified by name, county of commission, and expiration date.

Step 6 — Hold the four-year term, and renew on the course of study

The commission runs four years, statewide, with the term’s working duties as the course taught them: a certificate on every act, the contemporaneous journal with its prescribed entries and ten-year retention, the stamp discipline, the COMAR fee limits, and the duty to keep current contact information with the Secretary of State, whose program has been paperless — all applications and communications electronic — since January 1, 2021. Renewal opens 60 days before expiration and remains available up to 30 days after the expiration date; beyond that point, a new commission application is required. The renewal education item is the course of study alone: the renewal applicant completes the course with an authorised provider, receives the Certificate of Completion, and submits its electronic copy with the online renewal application and the $25 fee; the determination on a renewal is made by the Secretary of State, and the oath before the clerk of the circuit court, inside the same 30-day discipline and for the same clerk’s charges, begins the new term. No renewal examination is imposed by § 18-102(a)(4)(ii), and none is described on the Secretary of State’s renewal page.

What makes this gate demanding

The demand is structural, and it is easy to misread from outside the state. Maryland’s examination has no state sitting, no published time limit, and no test-center appointment — and none of that makes it a formality. COMAR fixes a floor, not a ceiling: at least 20 questions, drawn from a bank of at least 50, sourced from each Handbook section covering the laws, regulations, ethics, and procedures, so no section of the Handbook is safe to skip, and a provider’s examination may present more than the floor. The standard is a Certificate-of-Passing standard — correctly answer at least 80 percent of the questions — applied to questions each of which has exactly one correct answer among four, with the result known immediately at the end of the session. The retest opportunity COMAR guarantees runs to an applicant who completed the course; it is not a reason to arrive unprepared, because the two certificates are filing items in an application that also carries a background check, a disclosure duty whose breach is itself a ground of denial, a senatorial determination, and, after approval, a thirty-day oath window whose breach revokes the commission outright. A candidate who passes the examination and then misses the district lookup, the address verification, the references, or the clerk’s window has failed the route as completely as a candidate who never passes at all — and a candidate who treats the course as attendance, rather than as the first encounter with the exact text the examination is sourced from, meets the same material twice and masters it neither time.

The credential at work

The Maryland commission is held across the State’s banks and credit unions, law offices, title and settlement companies, real estate closings, healthcare and government offices, and the everyday counters where a signature must be acknowledged, sworn, verified, or witnessed before a public officer rather than a party. The Secretary of State’s own FAQ puts the scale plainly: there are over 80,000 notaries in Maryland, findable at banks, law offices, and other local establishments. It is a four-year, statewide appointment, exercised only while the notary is physically in Maryland, and since the 2020 and 2021 changes it carries the modern layers the Handbook governs — a certificate on every act, copy certification, electronic notarization on personal appearance, and remote notarization by communication technology through authorised vendors — each resting on the journal, stamp, identification, and fee discipline the mandated course and examination test. That is why the gate is built from the Handbook rather than from general notary lore: the instruments the examination examines are the instruments of the daily work.

What the PassProfessor program will cover

Preparation built on the package as Maryland structures it. This gate is a course of study and a provider-administered examination under COMAR standards, drawn from one Handbook — and the program in the works prepares in that shape: study and practice organised by the Handbook’s own ground, in the sequence the course and examination use it, from the commission and its qualifications through identification and refusal, certificates and the acts, the stamp and the journal, the fee schedule, and the electronic and remote boundaries — so the material is learned the way the examination sources it, section by section, with no section treated as optional.

Written from the primary sources. The program is written from the Secretary of State’s own publications — the Notary Division’s applicant, renewal, and FAQ pages and the authorised-provider framework — from COMAR Title 01, Subtitle 02, Chapter 08, in particular Regulations .02, .14, .15, and .16, and from the governing statute, State Government Article, Title 18, with the passing standard carried only in COMAR’s exact published form. Where a figure in circulation cannot be verified in those sources — an examination time limit, a course hour count, a topic weight, a score-validity period — the program prints none and says so, because COMAR and the Secretary of State publish the standard they publish and no other.

The whole candidate, not only the test-taker. Around the Handbook practice, the program carries the route as the Secretary of State and the statute publish it — the qualifications and the absence of any attorney exemption in the sources, the two certificates as filing items, the district-and-Senator lookup and the determination it feeds, the background check and the disclosure duty, the $25 Maryland application fee and the $30 Handbook kept distinct from provider charges and from the clerk’s $10 and $1, the thirty-day oath window with revocation beyond it, and the renewal rule that substitutes the course of study for any second examination — because on this route the filing and sequence failures are as final as a failed examination, and one of them revokes the commission itself.

Preparation only. This is preparation for a course-and-examination requirement administered under the authority of the Maryland Secretary of State through providers the Secretary of State authorises. PassProfessor is not affiliated with the Secretary of State, is not an authorised course of study and examination provider, issues no Certificate of Completion and no Certificate of Passing, and reports nothing to the Secretary of State or to any provider; nothing in the program substitutes for the authorised course of study, the provider’s examination, the application, or the oath.

Tell me when enrollment opens. The Maryland Notary Public program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program. No date is promised, because the program will open when it meets the standard described above, not before.

Frequently asked questions

Who commissions a Maryland notary public, and who runs the program?

The Governor appoints and commissions Maryland notaries public, on the approval § 18-101 prescribes — for a resident applicant, approval by a Senator representing the applicant’s senatorial district and subdistrict, or the Secretary of State’s approval where the Senator has delegated that authority. The Secretary of State, through its Notary Division, administers the program: applications, the authorised-provider list, determinations where authority is delegated, and the records of commissions.

What exactly must a first-time applicant complete before the commission can issue?

Two proof items from a Secretary of State–authorised provider: a completed course of study, evidenced by a Certificate of Completion, and a passed examination, evidenced by a Certificate of Passing. Electronic copies of both certificates are submitted with the online application. Section 18-102(a)(4)(i) has imposed that pair on initial applicants since October 1, 2021.

Is this a state examination I schedule at a test center?

No. Maryland structures the examination inside the mandated course package: the Secretary of State regularly offers the course and examination under § 18-102(b) and may offer them through an approved entity, and in operation an authorised provider delivers both. There is no separate state sitting described in the statute, COMAR, or the Secretary of State’s pages, and this page describes none.

What is the passing standard, exactly?

COMAR 01.02.08.16F, in its published form: “The examination shall contain at least 20 questions that are clearly stated in a multiple-choice format, and each applicant must correctly answer at least 80 percent of the questions in order to be issued a Certificate of Passing under Regulation .15E of this chapter.” Regulation .15E states the provider’s companion duty: a Certificate of Passing goes to each applicant who scored at least 80 percent or better on the examination.

How many questions will my examination have, and how long will it take?

COMAR publishes a floor, not a fixed paper: at least 20 questions, drawn from a provider bank of at least 50 different questions, each question with four answers and one correct. A given provider’s examination may present more than the floor. No examination time limit is published in COMAR or on the Secretary of State’s pages read for this program, and none is stated here; a sitting length set by an individual provider is that provider’s delivery term, not a state standard.

What happens if I score below the standard?

You are qualified to retest: COMAR 01.02.08.15E provides that an applicant who completed the course of study but failed to score at least 80 percent is qualified to retest, and the provider shall provide an opportunity to retest. Scoring is immediate — the testing system notifies you of passing or failure at the conclusion of the examination session. No attempt cap is published in the sources read.

I am an attorney. Am I exempt?

No exemption appears in the sources: § 18-102 states the initial-applicant course-and-examination requirement without an attorney exception, and no attorney exemption appears in COMAR 01.02.08 or on the Secretary of State’s notary pages read for this program. Exemptions other states publish are not Maryland law and are not applied here.

Why does my Senator appear in a notary application?

Because the statute puts the Senator there. A resident application bears or is accompanied by the written approval of a Senator representing the senatorial district and subdistrict of residence — or, where that Senator has delegated approval authority to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State’s written approval — and the determination on a new application is made by the Senator or, on delegation, by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State’s process therefore begins with finding your legislative district number and your Senator’s name through the General Assembly’s lookup.

What does the State charge?

The Maryland charges published in the sources read are kept distinct. To the Secretary of State: a $25 application fee for a new or renewal application, and $30 for the Handbook for Maryland Notaries Public. To the Clerk of the Circuit Court at qualification: $10.00 for the commission and $1.00 registration fee. An authorised provider’s charges for the course and examination are the provider’s own; no state-published provider price appears in the sources read, and no total cost is stated here.

Is a bond required?

No surety bond requirement appears in the commissioning provisions of State Government Article, Title 18, or in COMAR 01.02.08, in the sources read. The route’s published financial items are the application fee, the Handbook, any provider charges, and the clerk’s fees.

How long is the commission, and where may I act?

Four years, and throughout Maryland: a commissioned notary may notarize anywhere in the State regardless of the county of commission, acting only while physically present in Maryland. Maryland issues no commission number; a notary is identified by name, county of commission, and expiration date.

What happens if I miss the oath deadline?

The commission is revoked. Within 30 days after the notice of appointment, the notary must qualify before the clerk of the circuit court and pay the prescribed fees; § 18-103(d)(5) provides that the appointment and commission of a notary who fails to do so are revoked, and the Secretary of State’s process requires an applicant revoked for failure to appear to reapply with a new application and another application fee. The statute preserves one relief: the Secretary of State may reinstate an appointment and commission for good cause shown.

How does renewal work — is there a second examination?

No second examination is imposed. A renewal applicant completes the course of study with an authorised provider and submits the Certificate of Completion with the online renewal application (§ 18-102(a)(4)(ii)); the renewal period begins 60 days before expiration and runs to 30 days after the expiration date, after which a new commission application is required. The oath before the clerk of the circuit court is taken on the new commission, inside the same 30-day discipline.

Must a Maryland notary keep a journal?

Yes, in the form the Secretary of State states: a journal chronicling each notarial act, entries made contemporaneously, each entry carrying the date and time, a description of the record and the type of act, the full name and address of each individual for whom the act is performed, the identification basis (a personal-knowledge statement, or a brief description of the satisfactory-evidence method and credential, with its issuance and expiration dates and identification number), the fee charged or an indication that none was charged, and whether the individual appeared in the notary’s physical presence or remotely by communication technology. The journal is retained for ten years after the last act contained in it.

What may a commissioned notary charge for an act?

COMAR 01.02.08.02, effective in this form January 22, 2024: no more than $8 for a notarial act and no more than $30 for a remote notarial act; $8 per signature on the original or first copy of a record and $4 per signature on each additional copy signed at the same time by the same person; no more than $2 for each reproduction of a notarized record or journal entry; $6 for certifying a copy of a record in the journal; and travel reimbursement at the Internal Revenue Service business mileage rate plus a travel fee not to exceed $5, where travel is required for the act.

Is PassProfessor an authorised provider, or affiliated with the Secretary of State?

Neither. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider, not affiliated with the Maryland Secretary of State, and not an authorised course of study and examination provider under COMAR 01.02.08.14–.16. This program confers no commission, issues neither certificate the application requires, and reports nothing to the State.