Citizens wishing to conduct a combined search in the registers of wills and protection mandates will be able to do so starting Sept. 2nd from a single online window. This project, born of several months of collaboration between the Barreau du Québec and the Chambre des notaires du Québec, aims to simplify a process often carried out in an emotionally charged context, and whose processing times can add up.
“As a notary or lawyer, when a citizen or a member of the family of a deceased person comes to see us, we always had to do two separate searches and it was often the professional who had to do it,” explains the general director of the Chamber of Notaries, Jean-François D’Amour.
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More than 80,000 will searches and 10,000 protection mandate searches are carried out each year in the province and all of these requests had to be made in duplicate by the public, or by the professionals who accompany them.
“This is really about simplifying everything, because people will be able to do it themselves, to make a request in one place and receive a single document, instead of there currently being two requests, in two different places and two deadlines to receive said certificates,” adds D’Amour.
This first phase of the project, which will simplify administrative procedures, will be followed by a second phase which will allow the issuance of a unique digital certificate.
The interim director general of the Barreau du Québec, Josée Roussin, clarified that citizens will continue to receive two forms for the time being—one from the Barreau and one from the Chambre des Notaires du Québec—but that under the second phase of the project, a single, unique, digital certificate will be issued.
She assures that the development of the second phase is underway, but that no deadline is available at the moment.
It currently takes about two weeks from the time a certificate is requested to its receipt by digital or postal delivery. Roussin says the timeframe “should definitely be shorter,” and it will still be possible to make an expedited request, for an additional fee.
“It will be faster for requests that are clear and without additional research,” she assures.
D’Amour says using the one-stop shop will not require “hours of training” for professionals, describing the new digital platform as user-friendly.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
