What Can We Learn From Pacino and De Niro? Understanding Affidavits and Notarial Verbiage

Actors Robert De Niro, age 79, and Al Pacino, age 83, just announced that they were expecting a baby! Yes, octogenarian fatherhood is a real thing. So real, in fact, that underwriters providing title insurance in Florida sometimes request an affidavit stating that the owners of the property in question were not survived by a minor child as a condition to clear title to a real property – regardless of the age of the property owners.

So, what can we learn from these senior-new-dads?

We can learn all about affidavits and the related nomenclature. Specifically, we can discuss the meaning of the terms:

• Acknowledgments
• Affidavits
• Affirmations
• Oaths
• Jurats

(this newsletter is both educational and gossipy at the same time!)

The distinctions between these terms are mostly important to us notaries that have to use the correct Jurat (notarial verbiage at the end of a notarized document), but the real difference in these documents lies within the signer’s (affiant’s) intent. Is the affiant swearing that the facts in the document are true or only stating that they’re the ones that signed the document?

With an Oath, the affiant is swearing to the content of a document. With an Acknowledgment, the affiant is acknowledging that he or she is the person that signed the document.

With an Affidavit, the notary administers an Oath and with an Affirmation, the notary jurat is an Acknowledgement.

So there you have it, we learn that any time we’re swearing something is true, the Jurat will include an Oath and the document will most likely be an Affidavit and any time we state that we are the ones that signed the document, the Jurat will include an acknowledgment and the document may be called an affirmation. We also learn that in Hollywood, you can have a baby at any age and you’re still considered very cool!