Public and private documents

You need the 7/12 extract or a municipal property card for your family’s plot. You do not bring the original register to court; you pay a fee at the office and receive a stamped copy. Compare that with a friend’s sale agreement for a flat, which lives in a cupboard and has two witnesses’ signatures on it. Both are documents, but the court deals with them very differently. The Act sorts them into public and private and gives each its own method of proof.

In two minutes

A public document is an act or record of the sovereign, official bodies, tribunals or public officers, or a public record of private documents (s.74(1)); it is proved by a certified copy (ss.75–77); every other document is private (s.74(2)) and is proved by the rules on signature, attestation and comparison (ss.65–73).

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