International Apostille Services: This Is How It Works

Our many years of experience in managing various legal and administrative processes between entities in Israel and abroad shows us time and time again how the process of issuing apostilles for certain translated documents is not at all known to the public and, in many cases, not even to those who need it. Briefly, an apostille is a certificate attached to certain documents, indicating that the documents are legitimate and authentic. The apostille is issued by various bodies in the states participating in the 1961 Hague  Convention). An International apostille is usually required when you need to submit an official document (usually after obtaining a notarized translation and attaching it to the original document) to an organization, body or person abroad, and knowing which office is responsible for issuing the apostille in Israel depends on the type of document.

Alongside these classic common cases, sometimes the opposite happens, where you receive an official document from abroad and, in order to submit it in Israel, an apostille is needed. Can the apostille be obtained within Israel, possibly at an embassy or consular office? The answer is no—the apostille must be obtained from the country in which the document was issued.

So what do you do? We are to help you with just that and, moreover, we will be happy to explain to you how to do it yourself (although we do warn you ahead of time that this is not the best choice). Our team of experts from our law firm will be happy to help you get through this somewhat complicated bureaucratic procedure quickly and effortlessly. Now, let’s try to understand how getting an apostille from abroad works.

What is an apostille?

When a legal or administrative proceeding takes place within the borders of the State of Israel (or any other state, for that matter), the various documents that change hands are easily recognized and verified by whoever requests them. For example, the bank clerk responsible for building a mortgage portfolio for his client knows what a standard land registry extract (Tabu) looks like – written in Hebrew and in the same format as similar documents.

In contrast, when such proceedings take place between countries, and a document from country A reaches country B, the person who receives it has no way of knowing that it is an official original document that was indeed issued by the authority responsible for issuing such documents. What do you do? Well, before 1961, the documents had to be translated by a notary and then approved at the embassy of the destination country. But what happens when a country does not have an embassy here in Israel or when a particular embassy is so busy that the request is not processed on time?

For this reason, in 1961 the Hague Convention regulating the process of issuing apostilles was signed. According to the Convention, apostilled documents from state A are automatically valid in State B (if, of course, both countries participate in the Hague Convention). As of 2020, 118 countries are signatories to the Convention, including Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, India, Italy and, of course, Israel (for the full list of countries, click here). In the State of Israel, apostilles may be issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Registrars of Magistrates’ Courts, and Civil Servants appointed by the Minister of Justice.

So, if you want to submit an Israeli document in the US, for instance, which also participates in the Hague Convention, you will need to obtain a notarized translation of the document and then an apostille, and only then can you submit it. We will be happy to assist you in these common cases, and provide you with a quality notarized translation into a wide variety of languages, ​as well as assist you in obtaining an apostille for the translation; but we now want to talk about the more complex situations, where an apostille from a foreign country is needed.

What do you do with documents from foreign countries?

As mentioned above, the common situation out office assists with involves documents from Israel that require an apostille so that they may be submitted in a foreign country, but there are certain cases where documents are received from a foreign country and need an apostille stamp so that they may be used in Israel. What happens then? Is it possible to simply apostille the documents in Israel?

Let us take the following hypothetical case as an example: An Israeli-American citizen who studied as a teenager in a high school in the state of Texas received a matriculation certificate and a certificate of 12 years of schooling from his school. Later, he immigrated to Israel and, a few years later, applied for admission to an academic institution in Israel. As part of the application process, he was required to submit his certificates and, in order for them to be legally valid, they had to be apostilled. Where could he apostille them? Only in the United States; in fact, only in Texas, because each state has its own rules of practice and competent authorities for issuing an apostille.

So what can the person in the above example do? Theoretically, he must travel to the United States and have his documents apostilled there. Of course, this is an option that is never convenient, especially these days, when the skies are closed again and again because of the corona virus.

Therefore, we are happy to offer clients an expedited procedure to obtain apostilles for existing documents in most Western countries and even reissue documents with apostilles attached.

Please note – there are specific situations in which it is possible to issue an apostille for a document from a foreign country at the country’s embassy in Israel, as in the cases of Australia and South Africa. We will of course be happy to help and do that for you as well.

Receive an International Apostille and Save valuable time and money

On the bottom line, the need for an apostille from a foreign country is something that can definitely take up valuable time, effort, and a large amount of money for a flight to the destination country just for this short bureaucratic procedure. With our law firm, you can save all the hassle and receive an apostille for a variety of documents. Contact us today and we will be happy to be at your service.

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03-3724722

055-9781688

office@lawoffice.org.il