USCG Certificate of Documentation 3rd Rejection Notice
- Action: To Do List item A0002 – Apply for USCG Certificate of Documentation.
- Completed: In Progress
- Cost: $325.00
On 26 June 2015 received notice from USCG NVDC that application for COD was rejected again. At issue was they stated the Bill of Sale provided was "ineligible for recording because it was not properly acknowledged" (notarized). They then stated to resubmit another bill of sale that was properly acknowledged before a US notary.
This latest rejection letter statements were illogical since the submitted Bill of Sale was legally notarized in Ireland. Also the "new" requirement that it must be properly acknowledged before a US notary did not make sense due to the fact this was a foreign purchase. I suspected something was wrong with the advice of NVDC personnel.
First action was a complete review of 46 CFR 67 requirements. Next, I called the NVDC.
This conversation revealed that Indra's Bill of Sale, legally notarized in Ireland with a Garda Síochána stamp reflecting this, was not accepted since the person performing the review was unknowledgeable of foreign notaries. The advice to obtain an acknowledgement before a US notary for a foreign sale was also deemed incorrect.
Next we discussed the original AMSA Form 159 Bill of Sale submitted, that was legally accepted and recorded by the AMSA Shipping Registration Office. The issue here was even though it was witnessed and signed by a separate person this did not satisfy the USCG requirement for a notary [46 CFR 67.207.a.2]. Note: A notary is refereed to as an acknowledgment in the CFR.
Next asked about the requirement for a Apostille [46 CFR 67.3 Acknowledgment (2)] for any foreign notary, which based on the long silence and mumbled discussions in the background, I knew they were not well versed in this subject. Finally they came back online and stated if the AMSA Form 159 Bill of Sale was Apostille (Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement for Legalization of Public Documents, 1961) they "probably" could accept it. I emphasized to them that by international treaty, which the US was party to, that an Apostille document MUST be accepted and is stipulated to carry the same legality of its foreign country.
I explained to them it was not practical to re-initiate another AMSA Form 159 Bill of Sale with an Australian notary as the previous owner was now in Ireland with no future projected date to return to Australia. They already had a copy of the original legally recorded Australian Bill of Sale, whether they accepted it or not. They then suggested that I also apply for a waiver for bill of sale requirements [46 CFR 67.89]. The cost of the long distance phone call was approximately $32.00.
So the next course of action was to get certified copies of AMSA Form 159 Bill of Sale and the Certificate of Deletion from the AMSA Shipping Registration Office and have these documents Apostille by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs.
