Schmidt & Schmidt offers the legalization of documents from St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha by apostille.
St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha acceded to the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in 1965. Therefore no diplomatic authentication or legalization of documents from St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha 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 Governor.
Documents issued by authorities, local authorities and other authorized structures of the Islands of St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cugna, published in English can be apostilled.
The process of legalization on the islands of St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cugna includes a check at the Office of the Governor of the origin and authenticity of the document. After passing through this procedure, a special stamp (an apostille) is affixed to the document.
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 St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha including apostille and translation.
Usually, processing the documents takes us 14 days.
