Apostilles, notaries, and more

This is a part of my series on pursuing temporary residency in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In case you haven't noticed, I tend to do a LOT of research for what amounts to fairly simple actions. So a lot of my posts thus far have more to do with looking for answers than actually getting results. Time will tell...

-I've added some links down below in the left column that have some information for ex-pats.

-I visited the "Ex-pat" forum again to see what others have had to say, and found something useful: The "Official Dummies Guide" to temporary residency in Russia. If you don't mind being called a dummy about every other sentence, it has some good information.*

The basic idea of this portion below is "ATN": Apostille first in your home country, then translate it once you get to Russia, and get the translation notarized. +/-

An excerpt:

A) IMPORTANT!!!! Certify Certify Certify Remember: A-T-N

Special Note: Expat Dummies love to debate and question everything. I will bet a month of my small salary that 10 idiots will debate whether or not Apostilles on various documents are required. Take my advice. Stop your whining and just do it! Apostille everything. Which in our case is the Criminal History Report, and Marriage Certificate. Which is nothing!!!!! Just do it!!!! This way there is not question as to the authenticity of a document. Duh!!!!!


-If the doc is not issued from Russia it needs to be certified as genuine.
To "certify" a document as genuine the Russians require that it is:
BIG WORD here - "Apostilled" or for you Brits "Legalized"!

Note: Read my post on Apostilles here for a more detailed description of the Apostille or Legalization Process: American only! TRP official answers Re: Apostille

B) Translations - Duh, yFMS needs to read your doc! If it ain't written in Russian it has to be. Need I say more?!

C) Notarizations - Russians would notarize the lable to your toilet cleaner if it was important. They Notarize everything. The Notary will only notarize your doc if it is Apostilled. That means you need to get it Apostilled first before you can get it Notarized. Got it?!?

A-T-N = Apostille then Translate then Notarize and your life is easy!!!!

*Note: This person was evidently exempt from the quota due to having a Russian spouse, which doesn't change much except that things like "marriage certificate" might not apply to you. From other portions of this account it also seems that the person was not in St. Petersburg, but in another city, possibly Moscow.