What is an apostille?

You must be thinking what this could possibly be. It sounds similar to Apollo, bad joke sorry. An apostille is the name that is provided to the specialised certificate that has been allotted by the secretary of state. This document is attached to your original documents. The purpose of this apostille is to verify the authenticity of your documents to other countries so that they can accept them without any dispute.

Travelling from London to anywhere around the globe will require you to have these apostille papers. Usually, countries that disregard the Hague convention will need the apostille documents or much-complicated documents. Upon apostilling a document the person basically provides the government with the authentication and the person is allowed to travel to another member country without restrictions. As long as the documents lack abstruseness you are good to go.

An apostille basically includes the following items:

• Name of the country from which the document is origination from.
• The name of the person signing the documents
• The authority’s information that has attached the stamp
• Place where the accreditation took place
• Date where accreditation took place
• Number of certificates

Do you need an apostille in the United Kingdom?

You need to get your hands on a professional who can help you with the whole process. One, they will definitely make your life easier and secondly, they will save you the hassle of going slightly bonkers. Your document provider is the best source who can guide you on if you require an apostille or not. According to an ancient rule of thumb, if your documents will end up with the court, a governmental office or land registry then you will be required to have an apostille. If one is applying for an overseas passport or documents a birth certificate generated in the United Kingdom would require an apostille. You need to be aware that not all the countries are included in the Hague convention and thus have failed to sign the Apostille treaty. For such cases, these documents need to be stamped by the country’s UK embassies. It is advised that one visits the embassy to know all the details regarding the subject.

In the United Kingdom get your documents legalised is not much of a hassle. This is because you can visit a legislation office and ask them to authorise if the stamp is from a UK public official. The legislation office will analyse the document to check the authenticity of the apostille stamp. Then they will legalise it by attaching the apostille to it. However, you will not be able to get these legalised outside of the United Kingdom if they were generated or issued to you there. Otherwise, the other state will reject them, so make sure you get them legalised in the UK. It will take you a good two to three working days for you to get these documents legalised.