Bill: Draft Notaries Act

[Incarnation__]

CONGRESS OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF REDMONT
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A BILL TO

ALLOW WRITTEN LEGAL DOCUMENTS TO BE NOTARIZED




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The people of the Commonwealth of Redmont, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law:


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PART I — PRELIMINARIES

1. Short Title and Enactment

(1) This Act may be cited as the ‘Notaries Act’

(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.

(3) This Act has been authored by TheSnowGuardian, MJL_, and Rep Incarnation__.

(4) This Act has been co-sponsored by Rep Stanley582.

(5) This Act amends the following acts:

(a) Redmont Civil Code Act

2. Reasons and Intent

(1) To combat the fact that the Courts have no jurisdiction on contracts or legal documents signed in Discord messages outside the DemocracyCraft server, using in-game DMs, and in Forum DMs.

(2) To provide justice to parties who are legally incapacitated and to prevent exploitation in attempts to hide the truth.

(3) To prevent misrepresentation of contracts or legal documents signed outside of the jurisdiction of the Courts, and to prevent misrepresentation of the content within contracts or legal documents that are of external file types.

(4) To mandate a formal record of significant contracts and/or legal documents, and to provide a system for maintaining such records.

(5) To combat a very specific type of legal agreements that do not come under the purview of Courts, and to remedy such problems.

(6) This Act also acknowledges the liberty of players who choose not to avail the service of the Notary’s Office, while still imposing a reasonable restriction on privacy to prevent fraud and for the betterment of the public in its interest.

3. Definitions

(1) For the purposes of this Act, the following definitions shall apply:

(a) Notary Office. It is the office overseen by the Department of Commerce, responsible for witnessing and notarizing legal documents.

(b) Notary. An individual hired by the Notary Office who is authorized to notarize contracts.

(c) Notarize. It is the process by which Codified Documents become Notarized Documents.

(d) Inactive. A player shall be considered if they have had 0 minutes of playtime within the past 30 days.

(e) Jurisdiction or Purview of Courts. It is the jurisdiction that the Courts are allowed in regard to Staff Warrant Policy.

(f) In-game chat. For the purpose of this Act, in-game chat shall include all in-game chats except for in-game DMs.

(g) Activity Check. It is a check that shall reopen the filing of the Notarized Document to determine whether a party to the case is still active within Redmont.

(h) Family documents. It includes Marriage and Adoption Certificates as well as other similar documents relating to families. Family documents shall not include pre-nuptial agreements.

PART II — CONTRACT TYPES

1. Witnessed Agreement

(1) It shall be an agreement whose statement of terms, offer, and acceptance happened during in-game chat and/or on the DemocracyCraft Discord server.

2. Verbal Agreement

(1) It shall be an agreement whose statement of terms, offer, and acceptance happened in any of the following:
(a) outside of in-game chat
(b) outside of the DemocracyCraft Discord server

3. Codified Document

(1) It shall be an agreement or document whose statement of terms and/or offer happened within an external document outside of DemocracyCraft Discord, Forums, or in-game chat.
(a) The acceptance by parties of such a contract may have happened within the document itself, and such acceptance may have happened within the purview or jurisdiction of the Courts.

4. Notarized Document

(1) It is a codified document whose signing by all parties occurred through the Notary’s Office via the notarization process.

PART III - Notarization Process

1. Notarizing a Codified Document

(1) In order to notarize a Codified Document, all parties shall sign the Codified Document within the Notary's Office.
(a) Should a party to the contract be unable to access the Notary’s Office, they may assign a proxy, after informing a Notary either privately or publicly about such a proxy, to sign the documents.
(i) The Notary must share proof of the party’s choice to proxy to all the other parties of the codified document.
(b) A party must sign the Codified Document in the purview of the Notary’s Office in order for the document to be notarized.

(2) A Notary shall close the filing by sealing the filing with the seal of the Notary’s Office, after acknowledging the signatures and agreement to offer and/or terms by all parties listed in the agreement/document.
(a) Grounds for closure of the filing shall also include failure to sign by one or more of the parties listed in the agreement/document. In such a case, the document shall not be considered notarized.
(b) All notarized documents shall require the Seal of the Notary’s Office, which shall be affixed to the document once the filing is closed.

(3) The Notary’s Office shall maintain these records until all the parties to the agreement/document decide to absolve and dissolve the notarized document.

(4) The Notary’s Office shall reopen the filing should a party request to amend the contract.
(a) The process for amendment shall follow Subsections (1) to (3).
(b) Should a party disagree or fail to sign, the amendment shall not be incorporated into the contract, and the closure process shall follow Subsection (2)(a).

(5) The Notary’s Office shall maintain a record of all notarized documents.
(a) Should all parties to the notarized document be inactive or not respond to an activity check conducted by the Notary’s Office within 30 days, the notarized document may be archived.
(b) The Notary’s Office shall inform all parties when a notarized document has been archived.
(c) If no party requests the archived document to be unarchived within 30 days, the notarized document may be removed from the record of the Notary’s Office.

(6) At the time of filing, the filing party must mention all parties to the contract outside of the document it is submitting.

PART IV – THE NOTARY’S OFFICE

1. Management

(1) The Notary’s Office shall be overseen by the Department of Commerce.

(2) The Head of the Notary’s Office shall be known as ‘Head Notary’ and shall be appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Commerce.
(a) The Head Notary shall serve the Notary’s Office at the will of the Secretary of the Department of Commerce.
(3) The Head Notary shall be in charge of the management of the Notary’s Office.

(4) The Department of Commerce is encouraged to develop a system that involves withholding the content of the codified document or notarized document from the Notary, while storing the content of the notarized document within a database accessible to the relevant parties.

2. Employees of the Notary’s Office

(1) The Notary’s Office shall employ the following personnel, whose titles are as follows:
(a) Notary. A notary must be an Attorney.
(b) Clerk.
(2) The Notary’s Office may create additional titles, roles, or responsibilities as it deems fit.

3. Privacy and Interests

(1) No Notary or employee of the Notary’s Office shall disclose any information they have received or have been party to due to their position as a Notary.

(2) The Notary’s Office shall not disclose information it holds in its records to the Department of Commerce without a judicial warrant or Court Order.

(3) A Notary may not:
(a) Notarize a document that they are a party to or have a beneficial interest in.
(b) Act as a proxy to a document they are going to notarize.

(4) Notarized documents or Codified documents submitted to the Notary’s Office:
(a) are private and shall only be viewable to the parties of the document and the Notary’s Office.
(i) Notarized documents may be viewed by the general public only if all parties to the document agree to it.
(ii) Family documents are considered property of the public, and therefore, they are viewable to the general public.

(5) The Notary’s Office, through the Department of Commerce, may be required to submit a notarized document should a Court Order require it.
(i) To maintain privacy, the Department of Commerce is encouraged to maintain a system that does not involve the reading or accessing of the notarized document stored by the Office of the Notary by any employee of the office.

PART V - NOTARIZED DOCUMENTS

1. Preference

(1) The Courts of the Commonwealth of Redmont shall:
(a) Only consider Notarized Document(s) whose dates of notarizing are closer to the present, should a dispute arise between versions of codified documents.
(i) After a lawsuit is filed, no notarized document relevant to the contents of the lawsuit shall be considered.
(b) Use their discretion in considering a non-notarized codified document whose liquidated damages exceed 10,000$
(c) Nullify or void a codified document whose liquidated damages exceed $100,000.

2. Required Notarized Documents

(1) Contracts or Legal Agreements in the form of Codified Documents that transfer the ownership of plots without reflecting the change in-game shall be notarized.

(2) The Courts shall exercise their discretion in considering a Verbal Agreement which transfers the ownership of plots without reflecting the change in-game.
(a) Should the Court decide not to consider a Verbal Agreement that transfers the ownership of plots without reflecting the change in-game, and should such a Verbal Agreement be a contract, it shall be nullified and voided.

(3) Adoption Certificates, Marriage Certificates/Licenses shall be notarized.

(4) A contract in the form of a codified document whose liquidated damages exceed a total 100,000$ shall be notarized.

PART VI – AMENDMENTS
1. Amendments to the Redmont Civil Code Act
(1) Part III, Section 6 of the Redmont Civil Code Act shall be amended as follows:

6. Liquidated Damages
(2) Award:
(a) Liquidated damages are paid out in the case of a breach of contract, and are pre-estimated and spelled out in advance when the contract is signed.
(b) Liquidated damages are meant as a fair representation of losses in situations where actual damages are difficult to ascertain and therefore do not count as Compensatory Damages or Punitive Damages.
(c) A contract or legal agreement with liquidated damages in excess of a total of 100,000$ shall be required to be notarized.

(3) Diminution of Award:
(a) The courts will require that the parties involved make the most reasonable assessment possible for the damages clause at the time the contract is signed.
(b) The courts may use their discretion in admitting a non-notarized contract whose liquidated damages exceed 10,000$.
(c) A legal agreement or contract whose liquidated damages exceed a total of 100,000$ without it being notarized shall be found void.

PART VII – POSTLIMINARIES
1. Transition

(1) Any contracts or legal documents signed before the signing of this Act shall still be valid.
(a) Contracts or legal documents signed before the signing of this Act may still be notarized using this Act.

(2) Within 60 days of the enactment of this Act:
(a) The Department of Commerce shall establish an operational Notary Office as required under Part 3 and Part 4.

(3) 14 days after the establishment of an operational Notary Office, this act shall be enforced.
(a) Contracts and legal documents made between the enactment of this Act and the creation of an operational Notary Office shall be exempt from the regulations of this Act.