Schmidt & Schmidt offers the legalization of documents from Malawi by apostille.
Malawi has joined the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in the year 1967. Therefore no diplomatic authentication or legalization of documents from Malawi 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 are the following institutions:
- Attorney General and Solicitor General
- Permanent Secretary at the Government Ministry
- Registrar of the Supreme Court
- Principal Registrar
- Public Notary
- Permanent Judge
Documents issued by the authorities of Malawi and other authorized local structures, or certified by Malawian notaries, published in English can be apostilled.
During legalization authorized officials verify the origin and authenticity of the document. After passing through this procedure, a special stamp (an apostille) is affixed to the document (or to its certified copy). As a rule, the apostille is placed on the back of the document, or on a separate sheet, after which the document is stitched.
An apostille is a stamp of rectangular shape. The heading "Apostille (Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961)" must be in French.
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)
- Trade register excerpts
- Judicial decisions
- Notarially certified copies of documents
- Notarially certified translations
- Further notarial documents (authorizations, last will, declarations)
- Commercial documents legalized 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 Malawi including apostille and translation.
Usually, processing the documents takes us 14 days.
