Apostille Hague and legalisation of documents

APOSTILLE Hague Convention

There are certain situations, where officials will insist that your Documents be legalised. This process involves taking a document to the Department of Foreign Affairs commonly known as DIRCO. DIRCO have records of all government officials designation numbers and signatures. An Apostle is an acknowledgement from DIRCO that the document in question has been signed by a recognised authority and that the this document is therefore authentic and valid.

An Apostille Certificate is usually required if you have dealings outside of the country which involve some form of official paperwork. Apostille are required for work, business, legal issues and personal matters. The most common requirements for an Apostille Certificate are overseas marriage, registering births, working or teaching abroad, foreign property purchases and business transactions or contracts.

Please take note that the Apostille is sowed onto the Certificate with a ribbon and the ribbon is sealed to the Apostille by means of a wax stamp bearing DIRCO's Insignia. You might want to order additional copies of your certificates if you need them for additional purposes.

Costs Involved

R1250

Issue delay:

8 weeks

Ask us about our 1 week service

If we are applying for your Unabridged Certificates we can simply have this done before dispatching it off to you. If however you need an existing Unabridged certificate to be Apotilled we will have to send it off to have this done and it might take a few extra days.

Legalisation and authenticating of documents for non signature states

As not all countries are signatory members of the Hague treaty, there will be some countries that do not accept an Apostilleas authentication of a document. For these non member countries the documents will need to be legalised and authenticated.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a good example of a non Hague member.

Process involved

The document will first have to be sent to a notary public to be notarised.

The Notarised document is then sent to the High Court to have the designation number and signature of the notary attested

The Judges designation number and signature will then be attested at DIRCO

The Authenticated document is then Verified by the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.

Some processes will be slightly different eg, for documents from Educational institutions they will first be sent to the department of education.