Based on the order from the Estonian Chamber of Notaries, the Centre of Registers and Information Systems of the Ministry of Justice has tailor-made a new info system „e-notary", which was taken into use on June 1st 2007 and has brought about numerous positive impacts.

After making a notarial act the notary’s petition on entry is accrued together with a real estate transaction or with a company’s memorandum of association to the register’s info system, after which the register’s info system enrols the arrival of the entry automatically. In addition, the submitted document is reserved a ranking of entry and entries to other registers are made according to this ranking. Formerly a notary’s office sent documents to register on paper and often only on the following day, which brought along the risk to lose the righteous ranking. For example, an owner of a registered immovable acting in bad faith had the opportunity to conclude transactions, which preclude one another, at different notaries during the same day. The successive course of action depended on which petition arrived in the land registry department first either via an employee of a notary’s office or via post office. Such a risk has been managed by implementing the new info system.

The „e-notary" info system coherently uses information from other registers. Data concerning the parties and object of a transaction are automatically taken from state registers to the contract, which excludes humane mistakes when inserting data manually.

The new info system also simplifies the process of paying state fees, as the „e-notary" system automatically prepares a pre-filled form of payment order with necessary data for executing each concrete payment.

Thus, the implementation of „e-notary" considerably decreases the occurrence of incidents, where a court maintaining the register cannot accept a petition on entry due to data mistakes in the state fee payment order or in a transaction document.

Introducing the „e-notary" info system is yet another step to affirm Estonia’s reputation as an e-country – similar technical instruments have been developed also for establishing companies and submitting tax declarations via e-portals online. For example, in 2006, the figures of electronic declaration in declaring all taxes remained between 80% and 90%.

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