On April 28^th, 2020, CG’s Act No. 12/2020 was made available by the General Justice Internal Affairs of São Paulo State, following the example of other Brazilian states, which regulates the practice of remote notary acts, with the signature of the parties performed through digital certificates in the standards approved by the Brazilian Public Key Infrastructure (“ICP-Brasil”), for a period of 30 (thirty) days.

Amongst the notarial acts authorized in this remote modality, there are public deeds, including those that transmit real estate rights, and powers of attorney, as well as notary minutes. The public deed of wills and the approval of closed wills are prohibited.

For the purposes of preserving the territoriality principle, the notary’s rules of jurisdiction were reinforced, such as: (i) the real estate’s circumscription; (ii) the domicile of one of the parties, in cases that do not involve real estate; (iii) the attorney’s domicile; and (iv) the fact’s location, when the diligence is required for the notary minute.

Under the act’s terms, the capacity verification and the formalization of the will of the parties and other participants, by the notary or their authorized agents, may be carried out remotely through videoconference or other technological resource for the transmission of sounds and images, provided that its content’s recording must be preserved at the notary public office.

At the end, the public notary will send the document in PDF format, containing the entire content of the notarial act performed, provided that the parties express their acceptance in the videoconference, accompanied by their respective digital signatures, by means of a digital certificate in the ICP-Brasil standard. The HASH code, generated by the parties’ signatures, will be released in the notarial act in the Book of Notes, identifying the codes with their respective authors.

According to the Provisional Measure 951/2020 and the Resolution No. 170 of the Brazilian Public Key Infrastructure Management Committee (CG ICP-Brasil), if one of the parties does not have a digital certificate, it’s issuance may be performed in the videoconference itself.

Due to the preventive measures of social isolation, as a way of combating the coronavirus, it is necessary to adopt measures that make it possible to conduct legal business digitally, such as the signing of public deeds. In this sense, the new act represents a major advance in the registry and notary area, and should prevail even after the pandemic ends, despite being valid for 30 (thirty) days from its publication.