A notary is an impartial and objective legal adviser who conscientiously and honestly provides all his clients as participants in a legal business with the right and safe path to reach their target.

Notaries are holders of a public authorisation received from the state to produce public documents. Notaries provide these documents with credibility, proven value and they keep documents safe. At the same time, they are liable to keep all confidential information as secret.

A notary is a public official appointed in the office by the Minister of Justice. A notary must be a Bachelor of Law graduate, has passed the state judicial examination and must have at least five years of work experience. In order to ensure that his or her activity has the necessary independence, notaries operate within the framework of a liberal profession.

A notary shall advise and operate fully impartially and independently and shall play the role of trusted third party neutral between parties.

What can a notary do for you?

Notaries are an irreplaceable link between an individual and the state. They are impartial and therefore both the state and the users of notarial services have absolute trust and confidence in them. They explain legal norms, have the role of indpendent advisers and are the first threshold in the protection of legal safety for the citizen and the legal state.

The main duty stated by the Notaries Act is the drawing up of public deeds: notarial deeds, notarial minutes and notarial certificates. A public deed drawn up by a notary proves the authenticity of its subject.

Notaries are also authorised to draw up private deeds and represent clients in proceedings with natural and legal persons, with government or other bodies, in administration proceedings, in civil trials during proceedings related to a notarial deed drawn up by a notary.

Notaries offer a broad range of legal services as for example they draw up all sorts of contracts for citizen, companies and entrepreneurs, hereby producing optimal, safe and cost-efficient solutions for all users of notary services in one place.

Benefits from notaries

Notarial services guarantee the constitutional and legal rights of citizen and their protection. Therefore notaries enhance a reliable and simple process of entering into legal transactions, protect consumers, allow companies to enjoy a professional and legally safe foundation to make business, and quickly and reliably enter information into public registers.

Notarial instruments have an important evidence value at court and other authorities. Notarial instruments can be executable in the same way as the final court decisions. The users of notarial services enjoy the major benefits from a directly executable notarial act of a contract. This means that – if the obligation for which a direct executability was agreed upon is not fulfilled – the civil procedure can be skipped and a creditor can demand the fulfilment of debtor's liability directly in an execution proceedings. Mostly, this refers to a purchase price payment or the hand-over of property.

Another important use of notaries is that they protect equally the public interest and also the interest of all users of notary services. With his work, he strengthens the safety of legal traffic, but remains independent and impartial and can therefore not represent one party only. This applies in particular to events after negotiations about mutual rights and obligations between parties are closed and the parties demand the acknowledgement of the already drawn up contract (private documents) in the form of a notarial act, in particular to obtain a direct executability of mutual obligations.

How to select a notary?

At least one notary is located in each county court area. Each district court area has at least one notary. In bigger cities, especially in the areas of district courts, there is at least one notary per twenty thousand citizens.

A notary is authorised to perform his/her work on the entire territory of the Republic of Slovenia, which means any natural or legal person has the right to consult the notary of his or her choice. The exceptions are notarial deed of legal operations for secured underlying assets or loans secured by a mortgage or land charge, which are under territorial jurisdiction of a notary located in the county court area in which the property in question is situated.

The price list for notary's services

Notary fee for services is charged in accordance with a notary tariff, defined by the Minister of Justice. Notary tariff also contains clauses on notaries being entitled to increase (in case of foreign legal resources, legal specialist knowledge, foreign language or special expert knowledge) and decrease or remit the fee (if a customer is in financial distress and is not accompanied by a financially viable person).

Agreements stipulating a different fee than the one in the notary public tariff are prohibited. If a customer disagrees with the stated fee, he or she can request a peaceful settlement of a dispute at the Executive Committee of the Chamber of Notaries of Slovenia.

The first notarial legal advice is free of charge.

Supervision

The notary exercises his or her functions with integrity, availability and diligence. The notary is liable for damages owing to his or her error when exercising his or her functions and insures this liability. The Chamber of Notaries of Slovenia supervises the work of an individual notary. The Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Slovenia exercises the government supervision over the work of the Notariat. Cases entrusted to a notary by the court are supervised by the president of a higher court located in the area of the notarial office.