Legalization And Authentication: How Does A Canadian Document Get Recognized In A Foreign Jurisdiction?

As clients are becoming more and more mobile, it is common to have assets all over the world which leads to multi-jurisdictional estate administration on the mobile client's death or incapacity. There are international treaties that try to make things easier and connect all these jurisdictions. One of these international treaties is the Hague Apostille Convention, which creates a universal process of authenticating foreign documents.

There are 115 signatory countries to this Convention – however, Canada is unfortunately not one.

So, what happens when we need to have one of our documents authenticated for a legal purpose in a foreign jurisdiction? In Canada, as in other non-signatory jurisdictions, we must follow a process that verifies the signatures on certain documents in order to confirm their validity for other jurisdictions. This process is referred to as authentication and legalization, which is usually a 3-step process.