Notaries in Bulgaria

In Bulgaria, in order to become a notary (нотариус), a legal professional needs to pass a special exam for notaries, and if successful, one joins the Notary Chamber. The number of notaries in Bulgaria and in the regions and towns is limited – therefore in order to become a notary, there must be a vacancy open in the respective region in which one wishes to work.

There are about 622 notaries in Bulgaria, which are spread geographically throughout 108 cities on the austrian territory.

Under bulgarian law certain documents are held to be valid only if they are notarised, i.e. if the authenticity of the signature of their author is certified by a notary with a notary stamp and signature. Such documents for example are Powers of Attorney, the specimen of the signature of a director of a company which has to be submitted to the company file of the company in the Court Registry, most declarations when they are presented before an authority by a third party on behalf of the declarer, etc.  Some transactions are also held to be valid only if they are executed in a notary form, that is, not by way of a simple written contract, but through preparation of a Notary Act (Deed), having a strict official form, signed and stamped by the notary. Such transactions are all deals involving real estates – purchase-sales, donations, exchanges, constitution of limited real property rights on real estates, etc. The legislator has provided for a mandatory notarisation in all cases affecting serious legal and contractual relations and therefore need more legal security and certainty. The providing of such security is assigned to notaries and that is why their functions are very important and, accordingly, their responsibility is very substantial. Thus, not only the contractual parties, but also every third party will be sure of the authenticity of a signature, a will, a sale-purchase, etc.

In the cases of a sale-purchase the notary appears usually only at the end of the process, at the finalisation of the deal. At that time the notary prepares the notary act (deeds) and ascertains the parties, the property, subject to the deal, the ownership and the will of the parties. The notary is obliged to make sure that the seller owns the property subject to sale, that the persons on behalf of whom the notary act is signed are the persons described in it, or in the case there are proxies, that the latter have valid representation power and that the will expressed in the notary deed matches the will of the parties.

Although many notaries require it, the notary is not obliged to make sure that the property is free of encumbrances. The notary is not obliged to include declarations of the seller in this sense, the notary is not obliged to include penalties or other similar provisions protecting the parties’ rights.  Generally, the notary is not acting on the side of any of the parties; he is independent and supervises the observation of the law.

The notary act has several obligatory elements and as long as the notary has complied with such requirements, he has fulfilled his duties. That is why, even at this final phase of a transaction a buyer or a seller must not rely on the notary only, but be careful, read carefully, and if possible, use professional legal assistance.

People can ask the services of a notary every time they want to authorise a date or a signature in a document and also, what is very important – when they want to deliver an important notice (for example for terminating a contract) to a third person, they can use a notary who certifies the date of delivery and the receiver, which may be used as solid proof in the court phase of a dispute.

The bulgarian notaries can also certify copies, though they are not allowed to certify copies of ID documents including passports by law because of identity theft. The only route in case of providing copies then would be to certify the copy by the issuing authority (the Ministry of Interior) and then have it apostilled by the competent authority (the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).