Schmidt & Schmidt offers the legalization of documents from Madeira by apostille.
The autonomous region of Madeira is legally a part of Portugal and as such, the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents came into effect in 1969. Therefore no diplomatic authentication or legalization of documents from Madeira is required for the legal communication with another member state of the convention. The documents only need to be stamped with an apostille by the issuing state's authorities in order to be valid in the state of destination.
Responsible for issuing the apostille is the Department of Public Prosecution of Funchal. In order to be eligible for apostilling, public certificates must be issued by portuguese government bodies in Portuguese.
An apostille is a stamp of rectangular shape. The heading "Apostille (Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961)" must be in French. The stamp indicates the signature verified by the apostille, the date and the identification number of the apostille itself.
The following documents can be authenticated by apostille:
- Certificates of civil status (certificates of birth, death, marriage and divorce)
- Education documents (school reports, certificates, diplomas)
- Excerpts from the commercial register
- Judicial decisions
- Notarially certified copies of documents
- Notarially certified translations
- Further notarial documents (authorisations, last will, declarations)
- Commercial documents legalised by a state organ of registration (articles of incorporation, registration certificates, tax registrations etc.)
Requirements for the documents:
An apostille can be issued exclusively on an original document. Therefor, the latter must be in an apparent good condition, all stamps and signatures have to be clear and readable. Furthermore, it must not contain alien marking and labels.
Additional services
In addition to the legalization of your documents, we can provide you with high quality translations.
If you want to bring company information before the court, it needs to be legalised as well. We are therefore offering extracts from the commercial register of Madeira including apostille and translation.
Usually, processing the documents takes us 14 days.
