Mama Always Said I Was Special...

Back in December, I and another girl here at work were informed that we were going to “get” to become “Special” Kentucky Notaries. Neither of us live in Kentucky and generally, you are only a notary for the state in which you live. But our firm has been doing more work in Kentucky and none of the employees here live in Kentucky, so something had to be done.

Low and behold, Kentucky has this “Special Commission” notary thing. So Julie and I were off, like a herd of turtles in our quest to become “Special.” So, you ask, what is the difference between becoming a “regular” notary and a “special” notary? Well, to become a regular notary, as with most states, you fill out the form, send a check for the bond and mail it to the secretary of state and a couple of weeks later you receive your certificate and your squeezie thingee.

To become “special,” there was still the lovely form, but instead of just mailing it with a check, this thing had some travelling to do. First, we had to take it to a clerk’s office in Kentucky and have them sign off on it. Henderson County is right across the bridge, about 20 miles round trip from the office, so one crisp day in December, we hopped into my little red wagon to take our forms to the Henderson County Clerk’s office.

Our first observation upon arriving at the Courthouse in Henderson is that there is absolutely NO security. You just walk right in. Not that I’m advocating such a thing, but if someone had it in their mind to do something malicious in a government building, this is the place to go… Anyway, we walk into the clerk’s office and a nice lady at the front looks at us and, without anyone saying a word, points us to the right. Julie and I happen to notice the sign that says “Marriage License” and points to the right. We looked at each other and decided that Henderson must be a more progressive county than we thought!

The lady behind this counter took our forms and wandered off in search of the clerk. After a couple of aborted attempts, she was finally successful and came back with the signed forms. She asked us if we were over the age of 18 and of sound mind – to which I responded, “as far as you know.” She returned the forms to us and we made our escape from Kentucky as quickly and orderly as we could before someone realized we didn’t belong there.

Then came the Christmas holidays and like a lot of people, our forms did some travelling. They were mailed to the KY Secretary of State in Frankfort. After the first of the year, another form came back from the Secretary of State and Jules and I zoomed back off to Henderson to pay the fee and be sworn in. Now here’s the fun part. We’d heard and joked about how when attorneys go to be sworn in for the Kentucky Bar, they have to swear that they haven’t participated in any duels. And I’ll be darned, if we didn’t have to do the same thing. The language that made us giggle a bit was basically that we “…have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this state, nor out of it, nor have [we] sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have [we] acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person…”


One would think that after being sworn in it would be over and we would be official, but no, the form made one final trip to Frankfort.

Today, we got our certificates, they even have a gold seal on them, and our squeezie thingees. So our quest has been successful and we are now Special Commission Notaries for Kentucky. Rose has another thing to put on her resume! Now I just need something to notarize….