A New York apostille is issued by the New York State Department of State, Apostille and Authentication Unit, filed either by mail to Albany or over the counter in Manhattan. Most notarized documents and locally issued vital records must first be certified by a County Clerk. Our service is $120 per apostille, all-inclusive.

Who issues apostilles in New York, and why does a County Clerk get involved?

Only one office in the state attaches the apostille itself: the Division of Licensing Services at the New York State Department of State. County clerks do not issue apostilles. Courts do not issue apostilles. Notaries certainly do not.

The County Clerk exists in this process for a narrow, mechanical reason. The Department of State authenticates documents by comparing the signature on the document against a specimen signature it holds on file — and it only holds specimen signatures for New York State officials and county clerks. A notary public in Queens, a village registrar in Ulster County, a university registrar in Brooklyn: the state has no signature on file for any of them. The County Clerk does. So the clerk certifies that signature first, and the clerk’s own signature is what the Department of State then recognizes.

That single rule explains almost every routing decision on this page, and almost every rejection.

Which route does your New York document take?

Which New York documents can be apostilled, and what does each one need?

Make it apostille-ready: the at-a-glance checklist

• The document is an original — original ink signature, original notary stamp, raised or embossed seal. Scans and photocopies are dead on arrival.
• If it is a birth or death certificate, the Letter of Exemplification is attached and was obtained before the County Clerk visit.
• If it is notarized, the signer appeared in person and signed in front of the notary.
• You know the county where the notary is qualified — check the notary’s stamp, not the address on the document.
• You know the destination country. It is a mandatory field on the state’s request form.
• Nothing is stapled through the seal, and no page has been added or removed since notarization.

How does the New York apostille process work, step by step?

1. Obtain the correct original. Order a certified copy from the issuing office — the city, town, or village clerk for upstate vital records, the NYC Department of Health for city records, the school registrar for academic documents, or the Division of Corporations for business filings. Request the Letter of Exemplification at the same time for birth and death certificates.
2. Notarize, if the document is private. Powers of attorney, affidavits, consents, and corporate resolutions are not public records. The signer must appear before a New York notary and sign in the notary’s presence. A notary can only witness your signature on your own statement; a notary cannot certify that a document is genuine.
3. Get County Clerk certification. File with the clerk of the county where the notary is qualified, or where the vital record was issued. In Manhattan that counter is the New York County Clerk’s Notary Department at 60 Centre Street, Room 141B. Clerks do not forward anything to Albany — the document comes back to you or your agent.
4. Complete form DOS-1917-f. The current revision is 02/2024 and it is downloadable from the Department of State. The destination country field decides whether you receive an apostille or a Certificate of Authentication, so it cannot be left blank.
5. File with the Department of State. By mail to Division of Licensing Services, P.O. Box 22001, Albany, NY 12201-2001, or over the counter at 123 William Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10038-3804 or 1 Commerce Plaza, Albany, NY 12231. Mail submissions need a return mailer enclosed.
6. Receive the apostille and send it on. The certificate is attached to your document and returned. For non-Hague destinations, consular legalization follows.

The most expensive mistake in New York is sending a notarized document to the wrong County Clerk. The correct clerk is the one for the county where the notary holds their commission — not the county where you live, not where the document was signed, and not where it is going. Check the notary’s stamp before anything moves.

How long does a New York apostille take?

The Department of State does not publish a committed turnaround, and any service quoting one as an official figure is guessing. What is verifiable is the mechanism, and the mechanism is what you can plan around:

• Counter filing is the fast lane. NYC311 describes in-person submission at the Department of State as the priority route compared with mail. Batch size matters: a single document at the window is a different proposition from twenty, which may be held and returned later.
• Albany mail filing is a queue. There is no same-day service by mail, and documents come back by first-class mail unless you enclose a prepaid express return envelope.
• The prerequisites usually dominate. Ordering a Letter of Exemplification, waiting on a registrar to produce a notarized true copy of a transcript, or getting a replacement certified copy of a thirty-year-old birth certificate routinely takes longer than the apostille step itself.

If a hard deadline exists — a visa interview, a closing date, a court filing abroad — build the schedule backwards from the prerequisite, not from the apostille. To confirm current conditions at the Apostille and Authentication Unit directly, the customer service line published on form DOS-1917-f is (518) 474-4429.

Document playbooks: the specifics that trip people up

Birth certificate apostille

Two branches. A certificate issued by the New York State Department of Health carries a state official’s signature and goes straight to the Department of State. A certificate issued by the New York City Department of Health or by a local upstate registrar must be certified by a County Clerk first — and for all five boroughs, that clerk is the New York County Clerk in Manhattan. Either way, a Letter of Exemplification must accompany it. The New York County Clerk treats the long-form certificate and its Letter of Exemplification as one document. The Department of Health also runs a mail-order service that forwards the certificate to the Department of State on your behalf; it requires separate payments to the two agencies and is not available for walk-in or online orders.

Marriage certificate apostille

Order a certified copy from the town, city, or village clerk that recorded the marriage, or from the NYC Marriage Bureau for a city marriage. No Letter of Exemplification is required. If the certificate is signed by a local clerk, it needs County Clerk certification before Albany. A marriage license is not a marriage certificate; make sure you are holding the record of the completed marriage.

Death certificate apostille

Same route as a birth certificate, including the Letter of Exemplification requirement. Estate matters abroad frequently also require an apostilled letters testamentary or an affidavit of heirship, which follow the notarized-document route instead.

Divorce decree and court order apostille

New York produces two different things and they are not interchangeable. A Certificate of Divorce is a vital record and follows the vital-records path. A judgment of divorce or other court order is a court record: obtain a certified or exemplified copy from the clerk of the court that issued it, and confirm with that office which certification the copy will carry before you file, since the Department of State will only recognize a signature it holds on file. Many foreign authorities specify which of the two they want — ask them first.

Notarized documents: POA, affidavits, consents

These are the highest-volume category and the highest-rejection category. The signer appears in person, signs in front of the notary, the notary stamps in original ink, and the document goes to the clerk of the notary’s county. A pre-signed page cannot be notarized after the fact.

Academic records: diplomas and transcripts

Three signatures deep before the state ever sees it. A school official must certify the document as an official record or a true copy of the original, that official’s signature must be notarized, and the notary’s signature must then be certified by the County Clerk. Registrars often take several business days just to produce the notarized copy, so start there.

Business records

New York authenticates only documents issued in New York. If your articles of incorporation were filed in Delaware or Nevada, that state’s Secretary of State handles the apostille — the same principle applies whether you are dealing with California apostilles filed in Sacramento, Massachusetts apostilles filed in Boston, or Minnesota apostilles filed in Saint Paul. For New York entities, obtain a certified copy from the Division of Corporations, State Records and UCC. Board resolutions and corporate powers of attorney are private documents and take the notarized route.

Background checks

An FBI Identity History Summary cannot be apostilled by New York under any circumstances — it is federal and belongs in Washington, where we handle federal apostille filing in Washington, D.C.. A New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services check is a state record, but form DOS-1917-f carries a specific instruction for those submissions, so read the current form instructions before sending one.

What does a New York apostille actually look like?

It is a separate certificate attached to your document, not a stamp on the face of it. It carries the ten numbered fields fixed by the Hague Convention: the country of issue, who signed the underlying document, the capacity in which they signed, the seal or stamp on it, the place and date of certification, the issuing authority, the certificate number, and the seal and signature of that authority. Every apostille worldwide contains those same ten fields, which is precisely why a receiving official in Madrid or São Paulo can read a New York apostille without knowing anything about New York.

If the destination is not a party to the Apostille Convention, New York issues a Certificate of Authentication instead. That document is not the finish line — it normally goes on to the destination country’s consulate for legalization, and some countries require U.S. Department of State authentication in between. Check the current HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention before assuming which applies; membership changes, and accession dates matter for documents dated near a country’s entry into force.

Common reasons a New York apostille request is rejected

• Wrong County Clerk. Sent to the clerk of the signer’s county rather than the county where the notary is qualified.
• County Clerk step skipped. A notarized power of attorney or an NYC birth certificate mailed straight to Albany. The state has no signature on file and returns it.
• County Clerk step added unnecessarily. A record already signed by a New York State official does not need clerk certification, and inserting one wastes a week.
• No Letter of Exemplification on a birth or death certificate, or one obtained after the clerk visit rather than before.
• Photocopy submitted. No original seal, no original signature, no authentication.
• Signature too old to match. A county clerk may no longer hold the specimen signature of the registrar who signed a decades-old vital record. The fix is a freshly issued certified copy from the local clerk.
• Pre-signed notarization. The signer did not appear before the notary, or the notary attempted to certify the document rather than witness a signature.
• Destination country left blank on form DOS-1917-f, so the state cannot determine apostille versus Certificate of Authentication.
• Payment problems at the counter. The New York County Clerk does not accept personal or company checks, and Department of State mail filings require payment drawn on a U.S. bank.
• Out-of-state or federal document. New York cannot authenticate a Florida marriage certificate or an FBI report, full stop.
• No return mailer enclosed with a mail-in submission.

Should you file it yourself or use a service?

Doing it yourself is entirely legal and, for one clean document with a local notary and a nearby county clerk, perfectly reasonable. The calculation changes when any of the following is true: the document needs the County Clerk in Manhattan and you are not in Manhattan; you have a stack of documents heading to different countries; the destination is non-Hague and consular legalization follows; a deadline exists; or you have already had one submission returned and cannot afford a second round trip through the mail.

What we do is straightforward. You send us the documents. We review them against the state’s requirements before anything is filed — which is where most rejections get caught — take them to the County Clerk where the clerk step applies, file at the Department of State counter, and ship the finished apostille back to you tracked. Our price is $120 per apostille, all-inclusive: no separate government-fee surcharge and no per-page add-ons. The state filing fee and the County Clerk certification fee are covered by that flat price.

One honest caveat: requirements vary by destination and the authority receiving your document has the final say on what it will accept. If the foreign office, consulate, or university has given you written instructions, send them to us with the documents.

What to do next

Pull out the document and read the certification block at the bottom. Identify who signed it — a New York State official, a local registrar, a notary, or a federal agency — and you have already determined your route from the diagram above. Then confirm two things: that you are holding the original with its seal, and that the destination country is one you can name on the form. Once those are settled, send us the document with the destination country and any instructions you have been given, and we will handle the County Clerk and the Department of State filing from there.