How to Verify a Notary’s Commission Is Real and Active

I bring this up unprompted, because I think it’s a healthy habit and not something you should only think to do if you’re already suspicious of someone. Verifying a notary’s commission takes about two minutes, it’s free, and it’s available to anyone — there’s no reason not to check, for me or for any notary you’re working with.

Where to check

• Kansas: the Kansas Secretary of State’s office maintains a public notary search tool where you can confirm a commission is active and see its expiration date
• Missouri: the Missouri Secretary of State’s office offers a similar public notary lookup

Both are official government resources, free to use, and don’t require creating an account or providing any personal information of your own to search.

What you’ll typically be able to confirm

• Whether the commission is currently active
• The commission’s expiration date
• The county or jurisdiction of commissioning, in some search results

What it won’t show you is a notary’s reputation, reviews, or general quality of work — that’s a separate question from whether the commission itself is legitimate and current, and worth researching through other means like reviews or references.

An active commission confirms someone is legally authorized to notarize. It’s the floor, not the ceiling — worth checking either way, but not the only thing worth checking.

A related habit: check the seal, too

A notary’s official seal should clearly display their name, commission expiration date, and the state of commissioning. If a seal looks incomplete, altered, or inconsistent with the notary’s stated credentials, that’s worth asking about directly — a legitimate notary won’t be bothered by the question.

Why I bring this up myself

Trust in a notarization ultimately depends on trust in the notary performing it. I’d rather a client feel confident checking than simply take my word for it — that confidence is worth more, to both of us, than skipping a two-minute step.