certified true copies

[Smetco]

Hi everyone, I’m preparing an Outland common‑law sponsorship, and I need to submit documents with translations, so I’m dealing with notarized “certified true copies”.

I’m confused about the best/accepted way to notarize multi‑page and multiple documents:

1) Can a notary certify one “bundle” that includes different document types together (IDs + bank statements + credit card pages + phone bills + payslips), and then I scan it as one file?

Or does IRCC expect separate certified true copies per original document?

I thought to certify + upload a bundle of documents for a certain section (proof of cohabitation, and then proof of relationship).

It’s asking for the name of the document as one of the certification requirements, so I want to understand if it’s possible to group similar documents together. How specific does the name need to be? If I’m grouping phone bills together, can it be from many time periods and each of our names?

2) For monthly documents (credit card “monthly activity”, bank statements, phone bills):
- Do you notarize each month as its own certified true copy, or can you combine multiple months into one certified copy set?
- If there are documents for two different people (me + my partner, different bank accounts/credit cards), can those be certified together, or should it be separate per person/account?

3) For people who were approved: how did your notary handle multi‑page docs?
- Did they stamp/sign every page, or only the first/last page?
- Did they write the certification wording on each page or just once per document (with page count, binding, initials, etc.)?

If you can share what you did and it was accepted by IRCC, that would really help. Thank you!!

 

[armoured]

Hi everyone, I’m preparing an Outland common‑law sponsorship, and I need to submit documents with translations, so I’m dealing with notarized “certified true copies”.

I’m confused about the best/accepted way to notarize multi‑page and multiple documents:

1) Can a notary certify one “bundle” that includes different document types together (IDs + bank statements + credit card pages + phone bills + payslips), and then I scan it as one file?

My own opinion (and experience, FWIW) - mind this is partly your own tolerance for cost and hassle:
-the critical ones to have translated and notarized are official docs - IDs, birth and marriage certificates, other things /mostly/ issued by government. Use your judgment. (Notaries may charge by the document so it will add up)
-for other things - which you've show here and that I'd classify as 'relationship evidence': first, go through and check that you really need all that. One or two of each type of document is usually sufficient, and consider - possibly - that some may not be needed at all. This will depend on each file and what the issues are / what other proof you have of the relationship.
-Personally I did not have docs that weren't official notarized - and in some cases just had the first page translated (but with the 'this is a true translation / official stamp' that was standard locally for official translations. I did it this way because I know that in many countries, the 'notarization' part is mainly reserved for official documents. YMMV. If it's cheap enough to get both done (i.e. in a place that does translations and notarizations together), by all means, do that.

If it were a choice between reams and reams of similar docs, I'd prefer to spend the money on one or two pages of each (eg bank statement, phone bills) well translated and notarised than dozens of each.

-Actually for a few docs I didn't have translated (bank statement), as I had pretty good knowledge that the office handling our file knew the local language well enough - and after all, if it's a bank statement, it's pretty clear what debit/credit/balance is in many languages - and if the local language is a less obscure one (eg Spanish), less risk they'll have an issue. In some others (lease) I only had one page translated and the next few pages untranslated (and then left out the appendices that were irrelevant info) -now note, a notary might refuse to notarise a partial document.

Now caveat: our case was several years living together, married, with a joint child, etc. There was very, very little doubt that we had enough documentation about relationship aspects. I still provided far more than was really needed, so I perhaps played a bit more loosely on those parts. I'd basically only recommend doing so for things that are optional/supplemental. And again - YMMV, use your own judgment.

I also think these things could be lumped together in submissions like 'bank statements', etc.