Real Estate & Deed Documents

An Ontario transfer is registered by a real estate lawyer, not by a notary

Ontario land is transferred through an electronic register, and the electronic documents are built around statements made by the solicitor acting for the transferor and the solicitor acting for the transferee — O. Reg. 19/99 under the Land Registration Reform Act sets out that wording line by line. A notary public does not register a transfer or a charge, and a notarial seal is not a substitute for that step.

This is worth knowing before you book anything, because it decides who you actually need. What a notary handles is the material around the registration: witnessing a signature, certifying that a copy is a true copy of the original, and commissioning a sworn statement the file requires. Where a law firm is handling the closing, ask the firm which of those it wants done outside — some witness everything in house, and some send clients out for it.

Section 21 of the Family Law Act, and why marital status keeps being sworn

Ontario’s Family Law Act contains a rule that surprises sellers more than any other. Under section 21, no spouse may dispose of or encumber an interest in a matrimonial home unless one of four things is true: the other spouse joins in the instrument or consents to the transaction; the other spouse has released those rights by a separation agreement; a court order has authorised the transaction or released the property; or both spouses have designated another property as the matrimonial home and that designation is registered and not cancelled.

It bites whether or not the other spouse is on title, and a transaction made in breach of it may be set aside by the court on an application under section 23, subject to the exceptions the section itself sets out. That is why spousal consents and sworn statements about marital status appear so often in a residential file. What the statement has to say is decided by the firm or institution asking for it — bring theirs, and read it properly before you sign rather than at the counter.

A continuing power of attorney for property is witnessed twice, not notarized once

People regularly ask for a property power of attorney to be notarized, when what Ontario law requires is witnesses. Section 10 of the Substitute Decisions Act, 1992 says a continuing power of attorney for property must be signed by the grantor in the presence of two witnesses, each of whom then signs the document as a witness.

The same section names who cannot witness it: the attorney, or the attorney’s spouse or partner; the grantor’s spouse or partner; a child of the grantor, or a person the grantor has demonstrated a settled intention to treat as a child; a person whose property is under guardianship or who has a guardian of the person; and anyone under eighteen years old. A continuing power of attorney that does not comply is not effective, although the court may declare it effective on an application if that is in the interests of the grantor or their dependants.

The notarial seal is a separate question. It is not what makes the document valid in Ontario, but banks, foreign registries and institutions abroad ask for one constantly, and both steps can happen in the same appointment. Our power of attorney page covers that document on its own.

Property in another country: the order of the steps is the whole job

A large share of the property work that reaches this office is not Ontario land at all. It is a sale, a purchase, a mortgage or an inheritance in another country, being handled from Scarborough by someone who cannot fly there to sign. The instrument is normally a power of attorney or a declaration, signed in front of an Ontario notary public, and it then needs authentication before a foreign registry will act on it.

Canada joined the Hague Apostille Convention on January 11, 2024. For a document going to a member country, a single apostille certificate replaced the old authentication-and-legalisation chain; for a country outside the Convention, the consular route still applies. Our apostille page sets out both. Get the requirement from the foreign notary, registry or bank in writing before anything is signed here — they set the form, the language and often the exact wording, and a document that arrives in the wrong form has to be redone from this end.

Certified copies, and the sworn statements a property file tends to collect

A certified true copy is a photocopy the notary has compared against the original in front of them and certified as a true reproduction of the document produced. Lenders, registries and foreign authorities ask for them constantly — identification, an agreement of purchase and sale, corporate documents for a numbered company on title, a death certificate in an estate sale. The original has to be physically present. A copy cannot be certified from a scan, a phone photograph, or another certified copy. See our certified true copies page for how that is handled.

Sworn statements are the other half of the work. Ontario charges land transfer tax on conveyances and publishes a Land Transfer Tax Affidavit for the value of the consideration; beyond the tax form, a file may carry a declaration about marital status, about identity where a name appears two different ways across documents, or about possession. Which of those a given transaction needs is set by the firm or the institution asking, not by us — see our statutory declarations page for what a sworn statement involves.