The Montana Notary Public commission is issued by the Montana Secretary of State under the Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts, Montana Code Annotated Title 1, Chapter 5, Part 6. Montana structures the gate as a package, not as a standalone test-center sitting: an applicant for a new or a renewed commission must complete approved notary education — at least four hours within the previous twelve months for a new commission — and pass an examination administered by the Secretary of State or by an entity the Secretary of State approves, based on that course of study. Under the Administrative Rules of Montana, a grade of 80% is considered passing; the pass must be no more than six months old when the application is submitted, and the certification of both the education and the examination is filed with the application itself. The commission runs four years, in any county in the state; the application fee set by rule is $25, and the surety bond is $25,000.
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What this commission is
A Montana notary public is an individual commissioned to perform a notarial act by the Secretary of State — that is the statute’s own definition, at MCA 1-5-602. The office is a public office: the Montana Notary Public Handbook describes the notary as a public official commissioned by the Secretary of State to administer oaths and affirmations, take acknowledgments, witness signatures, and perform other duties as permitted by state law, acting not on behalf of the notary or the notary’s employer but on behalf of the State of Montana, with a legal obligation to know Montana notary laws and to follow the standards of reasonable care. The Secretary of State’s Notary & Certifications Division is the primary resource for commissioning, informing, and educating Montana’s notaries public, and it maintains the electronic database through which the authority of a notary public to perform notarial acts may be verified.
Montana adopted the Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts as Part 6 of Title 1, Chapter 5, and the part supplies the whole frame this program teaches: the definitions and the acts themselves, the identification determinations each act requires, the certificate and its short forms, the official stamp and journal, remote and remote online notarization by communication technology, and the commissioning sections — qualifications at MCA 1-5-619, examination and education at MCA 1-5-620, and the grounds to deny, refuse to renew, revoke, suspend, or condition a commission at MCA 1-5-621. The gate this program prepares candidates for sits inside that frame, and it is structured as the statute structures it. Since July 1, 2020, the education requirement has stood alongside the examination for every applicant: section 1-5-620 requires an applicant for a new or renewed commission to pass an examination based on the course of study the same section prescribes, and to have completed the approved education hours within the windows the section sets. The examination is therefore not an event a candidate books separately from the training structure; it is the tested half of a single statutory package, delivered online through the Secretary of State’s notary system, and its output is a certification filed with the application — for the first commission and for every renewal alike. The companion Montana Notary Public Exam Guide sets out the law, the route, and the package in detail.
The commission at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Commission | Notary public, commissioned by the Montana Secretary of State under the Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts (MCA Title 1, Chapter 5, Part 6); term of four years; authority to perform notarial acts in any county in the state, and in a bordering state if that state recognizes the notary’s authority (MCA 1-5-605(4), 1-5-619(5)); one Montana commission in effect at a time (MCA 1-5-619(6)) |
| Administering authority | Montana Secretary of State — Notary & Certifications Division. PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the Secretary of State |
| Governing materials | MCA Title 1, Chapter 5, Part 6 (sections 1-5-601 to 1-5-632); the Administrative Rules of Montana, Title 44, Chapter 15 (ARM 44.15.101–110); the Montana Notary Public Handbook published by the Secretary of State |
| Who must complete the education and examination | Every applicant for a new or a renewed commission (MCA 1-5-619(2), 1-5-620(1)). No attorney exemption from the education or the examination appears in MCA 1-5-619 to 1-5-621 or in ARM 44.15.101, in the sources read — the package runs to applicants as such |
| The gate (statutory package) | Two certification items filed with the application (MCA 1-5-619(4)(e); ARM 44.15.101(4)): (1) completed education under MCA 1-5-620(3), and (2) a passed examination under MCA 1-5-620(1), based on the course of study described in MCA 1-5-620(2) |
| Education — new commission | On and after July 1, 2020, at least 4 hours of notary public education completed within the previous 12 months, approved by the Secretary of State or by the Commission on Continuing Legal Education (MCA 1-5-620(3)(a)). The course of study must cover the laws, rules, procedures, and ethics relevant to notarial acts, and is offered regularly by the Secretary of State or an approved entity (MCA 1-5-620(2)); approved courses are listed through the Secretary of State’s Notary Academy |
| Education — renewal | At least 4 hours of approved notary public continuing education within the previous 12 months, or at least 2 hours of approved continuing education in each of the previous 3 years (MCA 1-5-620(3)(b)) — and the examination again (MCA 1-5-620(1)) |
| Examination basis and delivery | Administered by the Secretary of State or by an entity approved by the Secretary of State, and based on the course of study in MCA 1-5-620(2) — the laws, rules, procedures, and ethics relevant to notarial acts. The Handbook describes it as the Secretary of State’s online examination; it is taken within the training-and-application structure, not as a separate test-center sitting |
| Passing standard | In the Administrative Rules’ published form: “A grade of 80% is considered passing” (ARM 44.15.101(4)(a)(i)). No question count and no time limit are published in the official sources read for this page, and none is printed here |
| Attempts and currency of a pass | New and renewing applicants must take and pass the examination no more than six months before submitting the application. If the applicant fails to achieve a passing score after three attempts, the applicant must wait three months before attempting to take the exam again (ARM 44.15.101(4)(a)) |
| Application | To the Secretary of State, with the information the rules require — including the applicant’s official signature exemplar, which must match the name on the application and the surety bond — an executed oath of office, the education-and-examination certification, the bond, and the nonrefundable filing fee, submitted within 30 days before or after the effective date of the surety bond or the expiration of the previous commission (MCA 1-5-619(4); ARM 44.15.101(1)–(4)). The Handbook’s current process is an online filing: training certificates, the exam certificate, and the signed and notarized bond are uploaded through the Secretary of State’s online notary filing system |
| Application fee | Montana fee: $25, nonrefundable (ARM 44.15.102). The statute separately authorizes the Secretary of State to collect fees commensurate with the cost of providing notary public education and examination (MCA 1-5-620(4)); no separate examination fee figure is published in the sources read, and none is printed here. Course charges, where an approved provider gives the course, are the provider’s |
| Bond | Assurance in the form of a surety bond or its functional equivalent in the amount of $25,000, on the Secretary of State’s prescribed form, from an approved bonding company, for the full four-year term; a notary may perform acts only while a valid assurance is on file (MCA 1-5-619(4)(d); ARM 44.15.103) |
| Renewal | A renewed commission is a new four-year term on the same package: the renewal education in one of its two statutory forms, the examination passed again within six months before applying, a new bond, the certification, and the $25 fee, filed inside the same 30-day window (MCA 1-5-619(4)(f), 1-5-620) |
What the course and examination cover
Neither the statute nor the rules publish topic weights for the examination, and this page prints none. The examinable scope is published, and it is exact: the examination must be based on the course of study described in MCA 1-5-620(2), and that course must cover the laws, rules, procedures, and ethics relevant to notarial acts. In Montana those laws and rules are Part 6 itself and ARM Title 44, Chapter 15, and the Montana Notary Public Handbook is the Secretary of State’s organisation of them for working notaries. The areas below follow the Handbook’s own organisation, because the Handbook is the text the course structure teaches from and the examination is based on.
The office itself: function, responsibility, integrity — Handbook Chapter 1
The Handbook opens with what the office is and is not. A notary does not legalize documents or verify the accuracy or truthfulness of a document’s contents; the notary’s function is to act as an official, unbiased witness to the identity, the comprehension, the intent, and the signature of the person who comes before the notary — administering oaths and affirmations, taking acknowledgments, witnessing signatures, and performing the other acts state law permits. The chapter’s first rule admits no exception: the person whose signature, oath, or acknowledgment is being notarized must personally appear before the notary at the time the notarial act takes place, and notarizing without that appearance is, in the Handbook’s words, de facto negligence and can be just cause for revocation. Around it sit the chapter’s working doctrines: integrity and impartiality as the office’s foundation, because the notary’s primary purpose is to deter fraud; the certificate as the notary’s witness statement of what happened, where, when, and who was involved; personal liability for damages resulting from official misconduct, with the bond explained for what it is — protection for the public, repayable by the notary on a successful claim, not insurance for the notary; and jurisdiction — every county in Montana, the bordering-state rule of MCA 1-5-605(4), and the strict Montana-borders limit on remote notarizations.
Becoming a notary: qualifications, the package, the stamp, and the journal — Handbook Chapter 2
Chapter 2 is the route rendered as the regulator states it, and it is examined as such: the qualifications (citizenship or permanent legal residence, eighteen years of age, the Montana connection, reading and writing English, and no disqualification under MCA 1-5-621); the four-year term, with the Certificate of Commission emailed as the official proof of the commission; the commissioning process itself — approved training with its completion certificates saved, the examination passed and its certificate saved, the $25,000 surety bond obtained from a licensed bonding agent, the bond signed as principal with the statement and oath of office notarized, the online application with the certificates and the signed bond uploaded, and the $25 application fee paid; the consistency rule that the name on the bond, on the application, and in the signatures must be exactly the same, because that becomes the official notary name and signature used on every act; the duty to notify the Secretary of State within 30 days of changes in the information on file; and the two instruments the chapter specifies in full — the official stamp (rectangular, approximately 1 inch by 2½ inches, blue or black ink, carrying the circular seal and the printed name, the title “Notary Public for the State of Montana,” the “Residing at” city and state, and the commission expiration date, replaced for each term and whenever its information changes, and never ordered before the Certificate of Commission arrives) and the journal (one or more journals, bound paper or tamper-evident electronic, with its prescribed entries, retained 10 years after the last entry, and never containing a signer’s social security number, license number, or birth date).
The notarial process, step by step — Handbook Chapter 3
Chapter 3 breaks every signature notarization into the six steps the examination tests as a sequence: require personal appearance; review the document — to learn what kind of document it is, what type of act is required, and who is supposed to sign it, including whether the signer acts in a representative capacity; identify the signer; determine the signer’s competency and willingness; create the journal record; and complete the notarial certificate. Identification is stated as Montana states it — two ways only: personal knowledge, the subjective standard the notary must be able to defend in court years later, and satisfactory evidence, documentary proof (signed or pictured government-issued identification, current or expired less than three years, with bank cards, credit cards, and non-pictured cards excluded as primary identifiers) or a credible witness who is personally known to the signer, identified to the notary, physically present, and unbiased, taken through the chapter’s six-step witness procedure under oath. Competency and willingness are judged to the standard of reasonable care, with the chapter’s duress and influence warnings. The journal entry is specified field by field — date and time, type of act, description of the document, type of identification, the signer’s printed name, signature, and address, and the fee — and the certificate is specified in its four components: the venue, the statement of particulars, the notary’s official signature, and the official seal or stamp, executed contemporaneously with the act.
The acts themselves — Handbook Chapter 4
Chapter 4 states the seven legally authorized notarial acts the Handbook enumerates — taking acknowledgments, witnessing signatures, verification upon oath or affirmation (the jurat), administering oaths, certifying copies, certifying transcripts of depositions or affidavits, and making protests of negotiable instruments — with the statute’s certification of fact standing alongside them in the definitions and short forms of MCA 1-5-602 and 1-5-610. Each act is taught as a procedure with its own certificate: the acknowledgment, in which the signer need not sign before the notary but must verbally acknowledge a signature the notary has verified, in an individual or a representative capacity; signature witnessing, in which an already-signed document must be signed again in the notary’s presence; the jurat, the most demanding act, joining a witnessed signing to an administered oath under penalty of perjury; oaths as a separate act; copy certification, with its prohibition on certifying copies of official public records — birth, death, and marriage certificates, court records, school transcripts — unless the notary is employed by the entity that issues or holds the original; and the two knowledge-gated acts, transcripts and protests, which only notaries knowledgeable of the applicable legal requirements may perform. The chapter also carries the refusal rules the statute states at MCA 1-5-622: a notary shall refuse where not satisfied the signer is competent or signing knowingly and voluntarily, and may refuse unless another law prohibits refusal.
Specialized work — Handbook Chapter 5
Chapter 5 covers the transactions where Montana notaries most often err: Montana motor vehicle titles, whose seller signatures must be notarized, whose older preprinted certificates omit the venue the notary must supply, which the Motor Vehicle Division will not accept with any correction or crossing-out — an error requires a Statement of Fact — and whose business and representative-capacity signings must name the entity, the actual signer, and the capacity; documents written in a foreign language, where the notarial certificate must be in English, the ordinary identification and competency checks apply unchanged, and a certificate that asks the notary to attest beyond Montana authority must be refused; records destined for a foreign country, where the Secretary of State’s apostille or authentication verifies the notary’s authority and a completely correct certificate is the notary’s whole contribution, with the special school-records sequence for transcripts and diplomas; and signers with disabilities or special signatures — signature by mark, stamp, or device under the same rules as ink, and signature by a third party at the direction of a principal physically unable to sign, with the prescribed “Signature affixed by” wording in the certificate and both names recorded in the journal under MCA 1-5-623.
The laws and rules themselves — Handbook Chapter 6
Chapter 6 reproduces the governing texts — Part 6 and ARM Title 44, Chapter 15 — and the program treats it as the syllabus’s foundation rather than an appendix: the definitions at MCA 1-5-602, including appearing before, communication technology, credential analysis, identity proofing, remote notarization, and remote online notarization; the act-by-act determinations at MCA 1-5-603, including the three-year expiry window on identification credentials and the two-or-more-technologies rule for a principal appearing by communication technology; the certificate requirements at MCA 1-5-609 and the thirteen short forms at MCA 1-5-610; the electronic-record and communication-technology provisions at MCA 1-5-615, including the separate course and examination a notary must complete before a first remote or electronic act; the signature, stamp, and stamping-device sections, MCA 1-5-616 and 1-5-617; the journal and audiovisual-recording section, MCA 1-5-618, with its 10-year retentions; and the commissioning and conduct sections, MCA 1-5-619 to 1-5-632 — refusal, signature by direction, validity, prohibited acts and the prescribed advertising statement, the $10-per-act fee ceiling, the database, solemnization of marriage, and the penalties for unlawful acts.
The route, in order
Step 1 — Confirm the qualifications, and that the package applies to you
The commission’s threshold is citizenship, age, connection, literacy, and character: a citizen or permanent legal resident of the United States; at least 18 years old; a Montana connection in one of the statute’s five forms — a resident of Montana, the spouse or legal dependent of military personnel assigned to active duty in this state, a person maintaining a Title 35-registered place of business in Montana, a person regularly employed at an office, business, or facility in Montana by an employer registered and licensed to do business in this state, or the holder of a current Montana professional license; able to read and write English; and not disqualified under MCA 1-5-621 (MCA 1-5-619(1)). Unlike several states in this catalog’s notary family, Montana publishes no attorney exemption from the education or the examination in the commissioning sections: the package that follows runs to an applicant for a new or renewed commission as such, and the education-approval channel through the Commission on Continuing Legal Education is an approval route for courses, not an exemption from them.
Step 2 — Complete the approved education, inside its window
For a new commission, at least four hours of notary public education, completed within the previous twelve months, approved by the Secretary of State or by the Commission on Continuing Legal Education (MCA 1-5-620(3)(a)). Approval is the whole point of the step: the course of study must cover the laws, rules, procedures, and ethics relevant to notarial acts, it is offered regularly by the Secretary of State or an approved entity, and the Secretary of State’s Notary Academy lists the approved courses — a generic notary course that carries neither approval does not satisfy the requirement, however good its content. A renewing applicant takes the renewal form of the same step: at least four hours of approved continuing education within the previous twelve months, or at least two hours in each of the previous three years (MCA 1-5-620(3)(b)). Save the completion certificates: certification of the education is a filing item in Step 5, and completion without proof in hand does not complete the application.
Step 3 — Pass the examination, inside its window
The examination is administered by the Secretary of State or by an entity the Secretary of State approves, and it must be based on the course of study — the same laws, rules, procedures, and ethics the education covers (MCA 1-5-620(1)–(2)). The Handbook describes it as the Secretary of State’s online examination, taken within the training structure and saved as a certificate for the application. The standard is the Administrative Rules’ published form: a grade of 80% is considered passing (ARM 44.15.101(4)(a)(i)). Two clocks govern the step. The pass must be current: new and renewing applicants must take and pass the examination no more than six months before submitting the application, so a pass left unused expires and must be earned again. And attempts are rationed: an applicant who fails to achieve a passing score after three attempts must wait three months before attempting the examination again (ARM 44.15.101(4)(a)(ii)) — the rule that makes first-pass preparation, rather than trial sittings, the rational strategy. No question count and no time limit are published in the official sources for this requirement, and this program states none.
Step 4 — Obtain the $25,000 bond, and execute the oath on it
The applicant obtains an assurance in the form of a surety bond or its functional equivalent in the amount of $25,000, issued by a surety or other entity licensed or authorized to do business in Montana, on the form the Secretary of State prescribes, covering the acts performed during the term (MCA 1-5-619(4)(d); ARM 44.15.103). In the Handbook’s process the bond is signed by the applicant as principal, and the statement and oath of office that accompanies it is notarized — the applicant executes an oath of office as MCA 1-5-619(4)(c) requires, affirming under oath, as ARM 44.15.101(3) puts it, that the application’s information is true and correct and that the applicant will support and defend the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Montana and uphold the duties of the office. The name discipline of Step 2’s certificates applies here with full force: the name on the bond, the name on the application, and the official signature exemplar the rules require must be exactly the same, because that exemplar is the signature to be used on all notarized records. A notary may perform acts only while a valid assurance is on file with the Secretary of State.
Step 5 — File the online application, with the certification, inside the window
The application goes to the Secretary of State through the online notary filing system, assembling everything the earlier steps produced: the application information ARM 44.15.101(1) prescribes, including the disclosures the rule requires about recent convictions, fraud findings, and commission discipline in any state; the certification proving the applicant has completed the required education and passed the examination (MCA 1-5-619(4)(e); ARM 44.15.101(4)); the signed and notarized bond; and the $25 nonrefundable application fee (ARM 44.15.102). The filing has its own hard window: the application, bond, certification, and fee must be submitted within 30 days before or after the effective date of the surety bond or the expiration of the previous commission (MCA 1-5-619(4)(f)). An applicant who intends to provide remote or electronic notarization services says so in the application and identifies the communication technology or electronic notarization system to be used, with the certificate for that layer’s own course and examination (ARM 44.15.101(1)(j)) — a separate authorization built on the commission, treated at Step 6 of the companion guide’s route discussion, not a substitute for this package.
Step 6 — Hold the four-year term, and renew on the whole package again
The Secretary of State issues a commission for a four-year term to an applicant who has complied (MCA 1-5-619(5)), the Certificate of Commission arrives by email as the official proof, and only then does the notary order the stamp — in the ARM 44.15.107 format — and obtain the journal. The term’s working duties are Part 6’s: the certificate discipline, the journal with its eight statutory entries and 10-year retention, the 30-day change notifications of ARM 44.15.106, and acts only while the assurance remains on file. Renewal is not a lighter version of the route; it is the route run again. A renewed commission requires the renewal education in one of its two forms, the examination passed again no more than six months before applying, a new $25,000 bond for the new term, the certification, the oath, and the $25 fee, filed within 30 days before or after the previous commission’s expiration. A notary who lets that window and the six-month examination currency both run is, in substance, a new applicant again — which is why Montana’s tested pool renews itself every four years.
What makes this gate demanding
The demand is structural, and it sits in three places. First, the package is closed onto one body of law: the course of study must cover the laws, rules, procedures, and ethics relevant to notarial acts, and the examination must be based on that course of study — so course and examination are one subject encountered twice, the second time as a pass/fail determination against a published grade of 80%. That body of law is detailed exactly where practice fails: the three-year expiry window on identification credentials, the eight journal entries and the data that may never be entered in a journal, the 10-year retentions for the journal and for remote-act recordings, the certificate’s seven required contents, the thirteen short forms and the acts they belong to, and the exact wording of the advertising statement and the “Signature affixed by” insertion. Second, the clocks are unforgiving in both directions: education completed more than twelve months before applying is stale, a pass more than six months old is stale, the filing itself must land within 30 days of the bond’s effective date or the previous commission’s expiration, and three failed attempts impose a three-month wait — a candidate can fail this route on timing without ever failing a question. Third, the gate repeats: because renewal requires the examination again and the education again, in one of its two forms, the standard is not cleared once but maintained across a career, and the four-year cycle returns every Montana notary to the same published bar.
The credential at work
The Montana commission is held across the state’s banks and credit unions, title and real estate offices, law offices, healthcare facilities, county and state government counters, and the vehicle-title work Montana requires to be notarized — anywhere a signature must be acknowledged, sworn, witnessed, or certified before a commissioned public official rather than a party to the transaction, in a state whose distances make the local notary the working point of contact for paperwork that elsewhere happens at a courthouse. It is a four-year, statewide public appointment, verifiable in the Secretary of State’s electronic database — which also shows whether the notary has notified the Secretary of State of performing acts on electronic records, and any active or pending disciplinary action — and it carries the modern layers Part 6 governs: notarization of electronic records on a notary-selected electronic notarization system, and remote and remote online notarization by communication technology, each opened by its own notification, course, and examination under MCA 1-5-615. Montana notaries may also solemnize marriages, as MCA 1-5-630 provides. The journal, the stamp, and the certificate discipline the course and examination test are the daily instruments of that work, which is why the gate is built from the law and the Handbook rather than from general notary lore.
What the PassProfessor program will cover
Preparation built on the package as Montana structures it. This gate is approved education and an examination based on that education, filed as one certification inside a commissioning application — and the program in the works prepares in that shape: study and practice organised by the Montana Notary Public Handbook’s chapters, in the Handbook’s order, so the material is learned the way the course structure presents it and the examination draws on it, from the office’s function and the commissioning process through the six-step notarial process, the acts and their certificates, the specialized transactions, and the laws and rules themselves. PassProfessor is not an approved education provider for Montana, and this program is preparation for the examination — it does not satisfy, and does not substitute for, the approved education requirement of MCA 1-5-620(3).
Written from the primary sources. The program is written from the Secretary of State’s own publications — the Montana Notary Public Handbook, the Notary & Apostilles help pages, and the Notary Academy’s approved-course listings — and from the governing texts themselves, MCA Title 1, Chapter 5, Part 6 and ARM Title 44, Chapter 15, in their current form. Where a figure in circulation cannot be verified in those sources — a question count, a time limit, a separate examination fee — the program prints none and says so, because the published standard is the Administrative Rules’ grade of 80%, and the rest of the examination’s mechanics are the Secretary of State’s to publish.
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 five forms of the Montana connection, the two approval channels for education and why approval is the requirement, the twelve-month and six-month currency windows, the three-attempt rule and its three-month wait, the $25,000 bond and the oath executed on it, the $25 Montana application fee, the 30-day filing window, and the renewal rule that runs the whole package again — because on this route the sequence and timing failures are as final as a failed examination, and one of them starts a three-month clock of its own.
Preparation only. This is preparation for an education-and-examination requirement administered under the authority of the Montana Secretary of State. PassProfessor is not affiliated with the Secretary of State or the Notary & Certifications Division, no completion of this program is reported to the Secretary of State or to any education provider, and nothing in the program substitutes for the approved education, the examination, the bond, the application, or the oath.
Tell me when enrollment opens. The Montana 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.
Frequently asked questions
Who commissions a Montana notary public?
The Montana Secretary of State. The statute defines a notary public as an individual commissioned to perform a notarial act by the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State’s Notary & Certifications Division administers the program — commissioning, informing, and educating Montana’s notaries public, and maintaining the database that verifies a notary’s authority.
What exactly must an applicant complete before the commission can issue?
The package, in the statute’s order: the qualifications of MCA 1-5-619(1); the approved education of MCA 1-5-620(3) — at least four hours within the previous twelve months for a new commission; a pass on the examination of MCA 1-5-620(1), no more than six months before applying; a $25,000 surety bond; an executed oath of office; and the application with the education-and-examination certification and the $25 nonrefundable fee, filed within 30 days before or after the bond’s effective date or the previous commission’s expiration.
What is the passing standard on the examination?
The Administrative Rules publish it in this form: “A grade of 80% is considered passing” (ARM 44.15.101(4)(a)(i)). That grade is the whole published standard — no question count and no time limit are published in the Montana Code Annotated, the Administrative Rules, or the Secretary of State’s notary pages and Handbook read for this program, and none is stated here.
Does the education have to be a particular course?
It has to be approved education: at least four hours of notary public education approved by the Secretary of State or by the Commission on Continuing Legal Education, covering the laws, rules, procedures, and ethics relevant to notarial acts. The Secretary of State’s Notary Academy lists the approved courses. A course without one of those approvals does not satisfy MCA 1-5-620(3), whatever it covers — and the Handbook notes that the Secretary of State’s website links to a free online notary training course available to anyone, which is a study resource; the filing requirement is approved hours with their completion certificates.
I am an attorney. Am I exempt?
No exemption from the education or the examination for attorneys appears in MCA 1-5-619 to 1-5-621 or in ARM 44.15.101, in the sources read — the requirements run to an applicant for a new or renewed commission as such. Two attorney provisions exist elsewhere in Part 6 and neither is an exemption from this gate: education approved by the Commission on Continuing Legal Education counts toward the education requirement, and MCA 1-5-618(12) disapplies a journal provision for an attorney only where the Montana Supreme Court’s rules for members of the bar prohibit compliance with it.
What happens if I fail the examination?
You may attempt it again, within limits the rule states exactly: new and renewing applicants must take and pass the examination no more than six months before submitting the application, and if an applicant fails to achieve a passing score after three attempts, the applicant must wait three months before attempting to take the exam again (ARM 44.15.101(4)(a)). The three-attempt rule is why this program treats the first attempt as the one to prepare for.
What does the State charge?
The published Montana fee in the commissioning route is the $25 nonrefundable application fee (ARM 44.15.102). The statute also authorizes the Secretary of State to collect fees commensurate with the cost of providing notary public education and examination (MCA 1-5-620(4)); no separate examination fee figure is published in the sources read, and none is stated here. An approved course taken from a provider carries that provider’s own charges, which the State’s sources do not fix. The bond’s premium is set by the surety, not by the State.
Is a bond required, and how much?
Yes: an assurance in the form of a surety bond or its functional equivalent in the amount of $25,000, on the Secretary of State’s prescribed form from an approved bonding company, for the full four-year term (MCA 1-5-619(4)(d); ARM 44.15.103). The bond protects the public against the notary’s violations of notary law; it is not insurance for the notary, and a notary may perform acts only while a valid assurance is on file. Older material in circulation still shows a $10,000 bond — that figure is superseded and appears in a Secretary of State handbook edition and compilation that predate the current law; the current statute and rule both state $25,000.
How long is the commission, and where may I act?
Four years. A commission authorizes the notary to perform notarial acts in any county in Montana, and in a bordering state if that state recognizes the notary’s authority (MCA 1-5-605(4)). Remote notarizations are narrower: the notary must be physically located in Montana when performing them. An individual may not hold more than one Montana commission at the same time.
How does renewal work?
Renewal is the package run again for a new four-year term: renewal education — at least four hours of approved continuing education within the previous twelve months, or at least two hours in each of the previous three years — the examination passed again no more than six months before applying, a new $25,000 bond, the certification, the oath, and the $25 fee, with the filing submitted within 30 days before or after the previous commission’s expiration. There is no renewal without the examination in the current law.
Must a Montana notary keep a journal?
Yes. A notary public shall maintain one or more journals chronicling all notarial acts performed — a permanent, bound register on paper or a permanent, tamper-evident electronic journal — with each entry made contemporaneously and containing the eight items MCA 1-5-618(3) lists, from the date and time and the record’s description through the identification basis and the fee charged. The journal is retained for 10 years after the last act chronicled in it, and an audiovisual recording of a remote act is likewise retained for 10 years. A social security number, passport number, driver’s license number, or birth date may never be recorded in the journal.
What may a commissioned notary charge for an act?
Not more than $10 for each notarial act, across the acts MCA 1-5-626(1) lists — an acknowledgment, witnessing a signature, a jurat, certifying a transcript, certifying a copy, a certification of fact, or another authorized act. Additional fees for travel or for an act performed using an electronic notarization system or communication technology must be explained as additional and not determined by law, and agreed in advance; a travel fee is capped at the Internal Revenue Service standard mileage rate. A notary who charges must display a fee list in English. Those per-act charges are distinct from the State’s application fee above.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Secretary of State?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider, not affiliated with the Montana Secretary of State or its Notary & Certifications Division, and it is not an approved provider of the education MCA 1-5-620 requires. The program confers no commission and reports nothing to the State.