On this page

1. Key takeaways
2. On this page
3. Who issues apostilles in Florida, and where is it filed?
4. What is an apostille, and what does a Florida one look like?
5. Which route applies to my document?
6. What documents does Florida apostille, and what does each one need?
7. How does the Florida apostille process actually work?
8. How long does a Florida apostille take?
9. Doing it yourself versus having it filed for you
10. Common reasons a Florida apostille request is rejected
11. When will you need a Florida apostille?
12. What to do next
13. Frequently asked questions
14. Sources

On this page

1. Who issues apostilles in Florida, and where is it filed?
2. What is an apostille, and what does a Florida one look like?
3. Which route applies to my document?
4. What documents does Florida apostille, and what does each one need?
5. How does the Florida apostille process actually work?
6. How long does a Florida apostille take?
7. Doing it yourself versus having it filed for you
8. Common reasons a Florida apostille request is rejected
9. When will you need a Florida apostille?
10. What to do next

Who issues apostilles in Florida, and where is it filed?

Every Florida apostille is issued in Tallahassee by the Florida Department of State’s Division of Corporations, at 2415 N. Monroe Street, Suite 810. It is the state’s only competent authority. Whether your document was signed in Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville or Key West, the certificate itself is produced in one office in the capital.

That single fact explains most of what follows. No county clerk, county health department, city notary office or UPS Store can attach an apostille. They can produce the underlying record — and getting that part right is where most requests succeed or fail — but the authentication happens in one place. We file in person at that counter, which removes the inbound mail leg from South and Central Florida entirely.

The Department of State’s own guidance is published on the Apostille and Notarial Certification page and in its procedures for apostilles and notarial certificates. Read both before you mail anything yourself.

What is an apostille, and what does a Florida one look like?

An apostille is a standardized certificate created by the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961, which entered into force on 24 January 1965 and now binds more than 120 Contracting Parties. It does not certify that the contents of your document are true. It certifies three narrower things: the authenticity of the signature, the capacity in which the signer acted, and the identity of the seal or stamp on the document.

The physical certificate is prescribed by the Convention’s annex. It is a square with sides of at least 9 centimetres, headed with the French title APOSTILLE (Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961), and it carries ten numbered fields — four describing the underlying public document, six describing the issuing authority:

1. Country. United States of America.
2. This public document has been signed by. The name of the notary, State Registrar, clerk or official.
3. Acting in the capacity of. Their office or commission.
4. Bears the seal/stamp of. The seal appearing on the document itself.
5. At. Tallahassee, Florida.
6. The. Date of issue.
7. By. The Florida Secretary of State.
8. No. The register number.
9. Seal/stamp. Of the Florida Department of State.
10. Signature. Of the authorized signer.

Field 8 matters more than people expect. Competent authorities are required to keep a register of every apostille they issue and to confirm entries when a foreign authority asks. If a receiving office abroad doubts your certificate, that number is how it gets checked. The apostille is physically attached to the underlying document — normally stapled with a grommet or seal — and separating the two destroys it.

The most expensive mistake in Florida is walking into a county health department in Miami-Dade, Orange or Hillsborough for a birth certificate. Those certified copies are perfectly valid domestically, but Florida will not apostille them. Only a certified copy issued by the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Jacksonville and signed by the State Registrar is accepted.

Which route applies to my document?

Before anything else, sort your document into one of three buckets. The wrong bucket means the wrong building and a returned package.

Florida cannot certify federal signatures, and Washington cannot certify a Florida notary’s. If you hold an FBI Identity History Summary, it is a federal record and goes to the U.S. Department of State — we cover that path in detail for reports obtained through an FBI background check from DTIS, and you can identify your provider in the complete directory of FBI-approved channelers. Documents notarized outside Florida go to the state where the notary is commissioned; see, for example, California apostilles filed in Sacramento, Massachusetts apostilles filed in Boston, or Minnesota apostilles filed in Saint Paul.

What documents does Florida apostille, and what does each one need?

The state’s rule is consistent across every category: it must be an original certified document, not a photocopy, bearing an original signature and seal from a Florida notary or a Florida elected or appointed official.

Vital records: birth, marriage, divorce and death

The Florida Department of Health treats apostilling a vital record as a two-step job. Step one is obtaining the certification from the Bureau of Vital Statistics; step two is forwarding it to the Division of Corporations. The Department of Health points to online ordering through VitalChek as the faster route for step one.

For a birth certificate, order the long-form certified copy — many foreign registries, particularly for citizenship by descent and dual-nationality files, want parents’ full details shown. For a marriage certificate, the record you need is the one filed with the state, not the decorative certificate handed to you at the ceremony. A divorce decree is a court record, so it comes from the Clerk of the Circuit Court in the county where the case was heard — Miami-Dade, Orange and Hillsborough all have their own certification desks — although the state’s dissolution-of-marriage report is held by Vital Statistics. Confirm with the receiving authority abroad which of the two they want, because they are different documents. For a death certificate, decide before ordering whether the destination needs the version with cause of death; ordering the wrong one means starting over.

Court documents

Documents certified by a Clerk of the Circuit Court are an accepted category. The Department of State will not obtain them for you — you have to contact the clerk directly. Ask the clerk’s office specifically whether the destination country or the receiving authority also requires a judge’s exemplification on top of the clerk’s certification; some foreign courts ask for it, and it is far cheaper to get it in the same visit than to reorder later.

Notarized documents

This is the category people get wrong most often, because a signature that looks fine to you may be missing something the state needs. The document must contain a complete notarial statement — the jurat or acknowledgment wording, the venue, the date, the signer’s name, and how the signer was identified — plus the notary’s original signature, printed name, commission stamp and seal. The notary must hold a Florida commission. Do not sign the document before you are in front of the notary, and do not remove or re-staple pages after notarization.

Education records

Diplomas and transcripts are not signed by state officials, so they usually reach an apostille through a Florida notary who acknowledges the signature of the registrar or another authorized school official. Practice varies between Florida universities, community colleges and private schools, so call the registrar’s office at your institution and ask how they handle apostille requests before you order anything. If they issue sealed transcripts, leave the envelope sealed — an opened transcript is no longer certified.

Business and trade documents

A certificate of status from the Division of Corporations is expressly named as an acceptable original public document, which makes it the cleanest corporate route: the same department issues it and apostilles it. Company-generated documents — board resolutions, powers of attorney for a foreign subsidiary, distributor agreements — go the notarized route with an officer’s signature. Certificates of Free Sale, FDA export certificates and Certificates of Origin are handled differently depending on which agency issued them and are frequently federal rather than state records, so confirm the issuing agency before assuming Tallahassee is the right destination.

How does the Florida apostille process actually work?

1. Identify the correct issuing office. Vital records from the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Jacksonville; court records from the Clerk of the Circuit Court; corporate records from Sunbiz; private documents from a Florida notary.
2. Obtain the original certified document. A photocopy is not acceptable to the Department of State under any circumstances. The certified copy must carry an original signature and seal.
3. Confirm the destination country. Florida issues an apostille for Hague Convention countries and a Certificate of Notarial Authority for everywhere else, so the country must be named in the request. Check current membership on the HCCH Apostille Convention status table.
4. Submit to the Division of Corporations in Tallahassee. The Department of State’s request form, the original document, the state’s filing fee and return postage go in together. If you mail it, include a self-addressed stamped envelope or a pre-paid, pre-addressed air bill in your own name. When we handle it, we file at the counter in person and cover the state fee within our flat price.
5. Receive the apostille attached to your document. We scan it and email the scan the day it is issued, then ship the original by tracked service to Miami, Orlando, Tampa or wherever you are.
6. Add legalization only if the country is outside the Convention. A Certificate of Notarial Authority then goes on to the U.S. Department of State and the destination country’s embassy or consulate — a chain of successive authentications rather than a single certificate.

How long does a Florida apostille take?

The Department of State advises allowing at least five working days for processing, and states plainly that the actual time depends on volume and available resources. That figure covers the state’s handling only. Build a realistic schedule around it:

Filing in person is what compresses this. It eliminates the inbound mail leg and puts a person at the counter who can answer a question about your file instead of having the package returned with a note. The state’s five-working-day advisory still applies to its own processing — no service can shorten it — but everything on either side of it is controllable.

Doing it yourself versus having it filed for you

Do it yourself if you live in or near Tallahassee, your document is a straightforward notarized affidavit, the destination is a well-known Hague country, and your deadline is soft. The state publishes its request form and address, the fee schedule is public, and the process is not secret.

Use a filing service if you are outside Florida or outside the United States, you are working to a visa, court or registry deadline, you have several documents that need different underlying certifications, or the destination is outside the Convention and further legalization will follow. The failure modes are not obvious in advance — a county-issued birth certificate looks identical in every practical respect to the one the state will accept — and a rejection costs a full round trip of mail plus a reorder of the underlying record.

Our price is $120 per apostille, all-inclusive. The state’s filing fee, in-person filing in Tallahassee, a same-day emailed scan and U.S. return shipping are covered by that flat figure. There is no separate government-fee surcharge and no per-page add-on. If you file yourself, the Department of State charges its own fee per document, and the amount differs depending on whether the record was certified by a clerk of court or by vital statistics — check the current schedule on the state’s own page before mailing.

Common reasons a Florida apostille request is rejected

Nearly every rejection we see traces to one of these. The first four account for the large majority.

• A photocopy instead of an original. The Department of State requires an original certified copy or certificate of status. High-quality scans, colour copies and notarized copies of copies are all refused.
• A vital record from a county or local health department. Florida accepts only records issued by the Bureau of Vital Statistics and signed by the State Registrar. This is stated explicitly in the state’s procedures, and it is the single most common trap for Miami, Orlando and Tampa residents who order locally.
• An incomplete notarial certificate. Missing jurat or acknowledgment wording, a missing venue line, an absent commission stamp, or a seal that did not transfer legibly to the page.
• A document Florida has no authority over. Federal records such as FBI Identity History Summaries, naturalization certificates and IRS letters, and documents notarized in another state, cannot be apostilled in Tallahassee.
• No destination country stated. Without it, the state cannot decide between an apostille and a Certificate of Notarial Authority, and the request stalls.
• Wrong or missing filing fee. The fee is charged per document and varies by document type. It must be enclosed with the request.
• No return envelope or air bill. Mail-in requests need a self-addressed stamped envelope or a pre-paid, pre-addressed air bill showing the requester as both sender and recipient.
• Pages separated or re-stapled after certification. Removing a staple from a certified multi-page document breaks the certification. Leave it exactly as issued.
• Ordering the apostille before checking the recency rule. The apostille has no expiry date, but many foreign registries reject vital records issued more than a few months earlier — which means the underlying certificate, not the apostille, is what goes stale.

When will you need a Florida apostille?

The recurring cases are predictable: marrying abroad and needing a Florida birth certificate plus a single-status affidavit; applying for Italian, Irish, Polish, Portuguese or Mexican citizenship by descent using ancestral Florida vital records; enrolling children in a foreign school with Florida transcripts; sending a power of attorney so a relative can sell property overseas; registering a Florida LLC’s certificate of status to open a foreign bank account or bid on a tender; adoption and international custody files; and work-visa packets that require a background check and a degree. Miami’s Latin American business traffic, Orlando’s international relocations and Tampa’s export documentation all funnel into the same Tallahassee counter.

Requirements differ by country and the authority that receives your document has the final say on what it will accept, so confirm the exact format and recency with them before you order.

What to do next

Do one thing before anything else: confirm the source of your underlying document. If it is a Florida birth, marriage or death record, verify that your certified copy came from the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Jacksonville and carries the State Registrar’s signature — not a county health department. If it is a court record, call the Clerk of the Circuit Court in the county of filing and ask for a certified copy plus, if the destination requires it, an exemplification. If it is a private document, book a Florida notary and take unsigned pages with you.

Once you hold the correct original and know the destination country, you can start an order with us and ship it in. We file at the Division of Corporations counter in Tallahassee, email you the scan the day the apostille is issued, and ship the original back tracked — $120 per apostille, all-inclusive.