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Commission 135560858State of TexasCommission ends 07/29/2030

Double E'sNotary Services

I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY LICENSED TO PRACTICE LAW IN TEXAS AND MAY NOT GIVE LEGAL ADVICE OR ACCEPT FEES FOR LEGAL ADVICE.

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What changed for a Texas commission applied for in 2026

Senate Bill 693 is the change a Texas notary should read before the next renewal, not after a complaint. It took effect on September 1, 2025. The changes apply to a notary public application for appointment or reappointment submitted on or after January 1, 2026. A commission that was already in effect, from an application submitted before that date, is not rewritten by this bill during that term.

The journal is now part of whether you keep the commission. Government Code § 406.014 already required a record of each act. Senate Bill 693 put a failure to keep that record into the meaning of "good cause" in Government Code § 406.009(d). Good cause is the standard the Secretary of State uses to reject an application or revoke a commission. A book you meant to start is not a book you kept. Fee or no fee, the act goes in the record.

Government Code § 406.014(g) runs that retention to the tenth anniversary of the notarization. That is longer than the advice many of us were given years ago, which was to keep the book indefinitely because the statute had not named a date. The date is now there. Count it from the notarization, not from the day you close the book. If the last act in a volume is recent, that volume is still a live record.

Personal appearance is no longer only a ground for a complaint. Government Code § 406.0091 makes it an offense to perform a notarization with knowledge that the signer did not personally appear. It is a Class A misdemeanor. It is a state jail felony if the document transfers real property, or any interest in real property. There is a defense if the person who did appear presented an apparently valid identification that named them as the signer. In person, appearance means the signer is there so that you can see, hear, communicate, and take identification. Online, appearance means the interactive two-way audio-visual session that meets the online-notarization standards. A signature that arrived by email, and a signer who was in the office earlier, are not an appearance.

The education course is the other piece, and it is easy to mis-time. An applicant or a renewing notary whose application is submitted on or after January 1, 2026 completes the education requirement in Government Code § 406.023 before the commission is issued. If your current commission came from an earlier application, this course is a renewal item, not a demand that you retake it tomorrow. Put it on the calendar before you file the renewal. Do not file the renewal and discover the course afterward.

None of this is a reason to notarize a document you do not understand, or to explain one. The bill did not make a notary into a lawyer. It made the record, the appearance, and the education harder to treat as optional.

This note is the reading I would hand another Texas notary who is coming up for renewal. It is not legal advice. The text of the bill and Chapter 406 control if I have flattened a line.