Oaths, Declarations and Affidavits
At Stephens Happyman & Co. Solicitors, we are Commissioner for Oaths/Affidavits. This means you can swear an oath before us/depose to an affidavit or make declarations in our office and we are also able to certify your documents.
In some Judicial Proceedings, pieces of evidence are required to be given by way of affidavit; also in completing certain forms or making some types of applications, organizations may require you to authenticate the truthfulness of your declarations by oath. The Commissioner for Oath is the person before whom you swear an oath that the contents of the document/affidavit are true to the best of your knowledge. Also, some documents may not be required for use in the court, but are nevertheless required to be statutorily made, these types of documents are called statutory declarations.
In all these cases, you might be required to swear either by the Bible if you are a Christian, by the Koran if you are a Muslim or by affirmation if you don’t belong to any of the religions. Once you have done this, if you are found to have told a lie in the document, you may be found to have committed a criminal offence.
Where you are only to swear an oath before us and we are not the one to prepare the related documents, our fee is from £5.00 per document, whilst the sum of £2.00 is charged for each document exhibited (exhibited documents are documents mentioned in the affidavit and also attached to it). We are only able to determine if what is required is Oath taking (and not other related services), only after sighting your documents. It is after that we can advice on the actual fee applicable.
Certification of Documents
We can certify a document as a true copy of the original, where you are required to forward a certified true copy rather than the original. What you need to do is bring the original, then we will sight it and certify the copy provided.
Our fee for this service is from £20.00 per page of the document to be certified. Where we are to make the photocopies in our office, the cost of photocopying such document plus administrative charge will apply, and our fee may be as high as £30 per document certified.
Deed Poll
A Deed Poll is a document by which you effect a change of name.
At Stephens Happyman & Co, we are able to receive your instruction on the preparation of a deed poll if you want to change your name. Upon providing acceptable evidence, we may witness your execution of a deed poll where we can. Our fees for the service is £30.00.
Where we are to prepare a Deed Poll for you, we will charge you £100.00. Where you want us to just witness your Deed Poll, our fees will be £30.00.
Preparation of Affidavits/Statutory Declarations
Depending on your requirements, we at Stephens Happyman & Co Solicitors are able to take your instruction on relevant facts and prepare your affidavit or statutory declaration for you. Our fees for this service is from £150.00 (One Hundred and Fifty Pounds) where the affidavit to be prepared does not exceed 2 pages. Where a declaration is above two pages, a higher fee will apply.
The above services are walk in services and you can attend for Certification, Deed Poll, Oaths and Affidavit related services without any appointment from Monday to Friday between 11.00am and 4.00pm.