law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

, an acknowledgment is a declaration or avowal of one's own act, used to authenticate

legal instrument Legal instrument is a legal term of art that is used for any formally executed written document that can be formally attributed to its author, records and formally expresses a legally enforceable act, process, or contractual duty, obligation, or ...

s, which may give the instrument legal validity, and works to prevent the recording of false instruments or fraudulent executions. Acknowledgment involves a public official, frequently a notary public. The party executing the legal instrument orally declares that the instrument is his or her act or deed, and the official prepares a certificate attesting to the declaration. ''Acknowledgments'' are distinct from ''

jurat The ''jurats'' () are lay people in Guernsey and Jersey who act as judges of fact rather than law, though they preside over land conveyances and liquor licensing. In Alderney, however, the jurats are judges of both fact and law (assisted by the ...

s'', ''

verification Verify or verification may refer to: General * Verification and validation, in engineering or quality management systems, is the act of reviewing, inspecting or testing, in order to establish and document that a product, service or system meets ...

s'', and ''attestations''. A jurat differs from an acknowledgment in that a jurat lacks the statement that the instrument is the act or deed of the party executing it. A verification is distinct in that it seeks to verify the factual contents of the instrument, rather than the instrument itself. Finally, an attestation occurs where a third person gives his or her name as a witness to the actual execution of an instrument. Normally, acknowledgments only serve

evidentiary Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidenc ...

purposes, but some jurisdictions have made acknowledgment a requirement for

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, r ...

of instruments.

References

Legal terminology Real property law {{Realestate-stub

See also

References