Public documents issued by Portuguese authorities can only be apostilled in Portugal. In other words, each document must be apostilled in the country that issued it.

Examples of the most apostilled documents

The most commonly apostilled documents are: birth certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate, criminal record certificate and diploma from schools and universities etc.

🔗  Make a request for apostille

Where can I get the apostille?

Our office provides apostille in Portugal for clients from different countries.

As a rule, our office provides the issuance of the document and then provides the apostille. After that, we send the apostilled document from Portugal to the client’s country.

Expenses related to the apostille

The client will have the following expenses: a) office fees; b) public service fee (court) and; c) courier service (e.g. DHL).

The quote for the courier service can only be made after the completion of the apostille, because it will be necessary to weigh the envelope and calculate the distance between the sender and the recipient.

Apostille fee: there is a fee associated with obtaining an apostille. In Portugal the cost is €10.20 (2023 price).

Things we do not do.

We do not apostille documents issued outside of Portugal. We are in Portugal and we can only apostille documents issued in Portugal.

We do not receive documents already issued.

We only apostille documents that we issue ourselves. For example, even if the customer has a birth certificate already issued, we will not receive it. For security reasons, we will need to issue a new birth certificate and then apostille it.

This is because we would not be able to know whether the document we received is authentic or has some type of irregularity and forgery. In other words, we cannot be held responsible for documents that we cannot guarantee are authentic.

What is apostillization? (Hague Apostille)

The Hague Apostille is a simplified method of legalizing documents for international use between countries that are parties to the Hague Apostille Convention. The convention is named after the city of The Hague in the Netherlands, where it was concluded on October 5, 1961, and entered into force on January 24, 1965. Currently, there are more than 120 member countries that are part of the convention.

The main purpose of the Hague Apostille Convention is to streamline the process of legalizing documents, especially for public documents, in member countries. Before the convention, for a document to be recognized in a foreign country, it often required several levels of authentication and legalization, which was time-consuming and costly.

With the Hague Apostille, a single certificate of authentication (the “Apostille”) is issued by the competent authorities of the country where the document was issued. The Apostille acts as a universally recognized seal of authenticity, verifying the origin and legitimacy of the document. It is attached to the document or to a separate certificate and makes the document valid for use in any other member country without additional authentication.

The Hague Apostille Convention applies mainly to public documents such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, educational diplomas, notarial acts and official extracts from public registers.

It is important to note that each country has its own specific requirements and procedures for obtaining an Apostille, so it is advisable to check the specific guidelines of the country in question before requesting one.

Adriano Martins Pinheiro, lawyer in Portugal

tags: apostille, hague apostille, portugal, portuguese, documents, certificate, how, when, why .