The Service: Deposit as a Statutory Notarial Act (Article 38)
Article 38 of the Law of Georgia on Notaries sets out the full list of notarial acts a notary performs, and the deposit appears on that list directly: the notary takes money, securities and valuables into deposit. That drafting detail matters more than it first seems. Placing value with a notary is not a matter of an individual notary’s discretion or local custom — it is a statutory notarial act with a formally defined procedure. The Legal.ge team walks you through this route end to end: we assess how well a deposit fits your situation, plan the formalisation of the property to be deposited, and prepare the documentation the act requires.
In practice, a deposit is used when money or another valuable must change hands under a formal, independent procedure — for example, to secure the performance of obligations arising from a transaction. The rules governing the subsequent release or return of the deposited value are established by other norms of the legislation; we verify those details against your specific case at the consultation stage and explain each one separately, so that nothing remains vague.
What the Notary Takes into Deposit (Article 38)
The law names three categories, and all three appear verbatim in the text of the article: money, securities and valuables. The formulation is broad and covers different types of property — yet whether a particular item, sum or paper can be accepted into deposit is determined by the notary in each individual case. That is precisely why the first step with us is an assessment: we establish whether your value falls within the statutory categories, and only then plan the further steps.
The worth of the deposit lies in the fact that receipt and safekeeping of the property are recorded under notarial rules: the fact of acceptance, the composition of what was received and its legal grounds are officially documented. This reduces disputes between the parties that are not about the merits, and makes the procedure transparent — for the transferor as much as for the recipient.
Storage of Documents and Related Notarial Acts (Article 38)
Beyond taking valuables into deposit, the same article provides that the notary accepts documents for storage — and in practice the two acts often work together: the money or the papers sit in the deposit, while the documents constituting their basis sit in notarial storage. Article 38 also provides that, in addition to the notarial acts envisaged by this law, the notary performs other notarial acts provided for by Georgian legislation. From the full list we single out what most often accompanies a deposit:
- issues a certificate of ownership right;
- issues a certificate of inheritance right;
- takes measures to protect estate property;
- verifies the correctness of a copy or extract of a document against the original;
- verifies the authenticity of a signature on a document;
- issues an enforcement sheet;
- performs a protest of a bill of exchange and a sea protest.
This list creates the context: a deposit is rarely an isolated step. Measures to protect estate property or the issue of an enforcement sheet are frequently connected to values held in deposit or transferred through it. Our task is to plan the correct sequence of these acts so that every visit yields the maximum result.