5.2 Journal Requirements

Montana Notary Journal Requirements

Unlike many states where a journal is optional, Montana requires every notary public to keep a journal (sometimes called a record book or register) documenting every notarial act. The governing statute is MCA 1-5-618. The journal is the notary's primary defense against fraud allegations and the Secretary of State's audit trail, so the exam treats journal rules as high-yield.

Permitted Formats

You may keep a tangible (paper) journal, an electronic journal, or one or more of each simultaneously.

Required Entry Fields

For each act, the journal must capture:

• Date and time the act was performed
• Type of notarial act (acknowledgment, jurat, signature witnessing, copy certification, etc.)
• Description of the record (document type and its date)
• Full name and address of each individual for whom the act was performed
• Signature of the signer in the journal — required except for copy certifications and transcript certifications, where no signer appears before you
• Method of identification: personal knowledge, a credible witness, or the type of identification document presented
• Fee charged, or a notation of "no fee"

Prohibited Information (High-Yield)

To protect signers from identity theft, MCA 1-5-618 bars certain identifiers from the journal. Recording any of these is itself a violation:

You record the type of ID ("Montana driver's license") and its issuance or expiration date, but never the ID number itself. A frequent exam scenario: a signer offers their license and asks you to "write the number down for accuracy" — you must decline; the number is prohibited.

Timing and Contemporaneous Entries

Entries must be made contemporaneously — at the time of the act, while the signer is present — so the signer can sign the paper journal before leaving. Backfilling entries hours or days later defeats the journal's evidentiary purpose and is improper.

Retention, Loss, and Cessation

Note a correction to a common misconception: the statute requires prompt notification of a lost or stolen journal on discovery — it does not set a fixed "within 30 days" deadline. Treat "promptly" as immediately upon discovery. After the 10-year retention period runs from the last entry, you may destroy the journal. For Remote Online Notarization (RON) acts, the same entry must additionally note that communication technology was used, the platform/provider name, and the storage location of the audiovisual recording — covered in detail in section 5.5.

A Model Journal Entry

Walk through a complete, compliant entry so you can recognize a correct one on the exam:

Notice what is absent: the driver's license number, Jane's Social Security number, and her birthdate are never written down. You captured the type of credential and its expiration, which is exactly what the statute allows.

Why Contemporaneous Entries Matter

The contemporaneous-entry rule is not bureaucratic busywork. If a deed is later challenged as a forgery, your journal — written while the signer stood before you and signed it — is the strongest evidence that a genuine, identified person appeared. An entry reconstructed from memory days later carries far less weight and can expose the notary to liability. This is why the signer signs the paper journal at the moment of the act (electronic journals capture an equivalent record).

Common Journal Traps

• Trap: "A journal is optional in most states, so it must be optional in Montana." False — Montana requires it.
• Trap: "Record the license number for accuracy." Prohibited.
• Trap: "You may shred the journal as soon as your commission ends." False — retain 10 years from the last entry, or transmit to an approved repository.
• Trap: "Report a lost journal within 30 days." The statute says promptly on discovery — report immediately, not by an arbitrary deadline.

Best-Practice Tips

Keep the journal under your sole control, store it securely between uses, and never let an employer or anyone else make entries for you. If you keep both paper and electronic journals, make sure each act appears in one of them consistently so there is a single, reliable record per act.