An attestation clause is the witness-certification portion of an instrument—classically a will—in which the witnesses state that the document was executed before them and indicate how that execution took place. The New York booklet uses wills as the familiar example, but the concept is broader than one document type.
This is one of the terms notaries should know precisely because the booklet warns that a notary should be cautious about acknowledgments involving wills. An acknowledgment is not automatically the same thing as an attestation clause, and a notary’s certificate does not replace the witness formalities that testamentary instruments may require under other law.
Why it matters: In practice, people often assume that “notarized” and “properly witnessed” mean the same thing. They do not. An attestation clause speaks to witnessing; an acknowledgment speaks to execution before an officer.
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