5 records
Which states require a real estate deed to be witnessed as well as notarized, how many witnesses, and can the notary be one of them?
5 records, one fact each. Every value is transcribed from the source that states it and carries the sentence it was taken from: 7 sources across 5 sites, last checked 2026-09-02, due for re-check by 2028-09-01. Every record is listed below, each linking the page its value came from.
About this data
A deed recorded without the witnesses its state requires can be rejected by the county recorder or, worse, held defective after the fact. Free notary-industry blogs repeat a consistent list of five witness states (Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina) but none of the ones checked here cites the actual statute section, and they disagree with each other on the details: how many witnesses, and whether the notary can double as one. Georgia is the case they garble — its statute requires an attesting officer plus one other witness, and a second section says that officer may be a notary public, so the two blog answers ('two witnesses, notary cannot be one' and 'all require two except Georgia') are both wrong in different directions. This asset states each state's requirement in its own statute's words, quoted verbatim, together with the statute's own limits and alternatives — because in three of the five the witness rule is not absolute. Answers 'does a deed need witnesses', 'how many witnesses for a deed', 'can a notary be a witness on a deed'. These five states are the ones checked; the asset makes no claim about the other 45, which have not been read here.
The data
| State | Witness requirement | Statute | Limit or alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Connecticut | attested to by two witnesses with their own hands | Conn. Gen. Stat. § 47-5(a)(4) | |
| Florida | signed in the presence of two subscribing witnesses | Fla. Stat. § 689.01(1) | Any requirement that an instrument be signed in the presence of two subscribing witnesses may be satisfied by witnesses being present and electronically signing by means of audio-video communication technology |
| Georgia | attested by an officer as provided in Code Section 44-2-15, and attested by one other witness | Georgia Code Title 44. Property § 44-5-30 | Any of the instruments enumerated in Code Section 44-2-14 may be attested by a judge of a court of record, including a judge of a municipal court, or by a magistrate, a notary public, or a clerk or deputy clerk of a superior court or of a city court created by special Act of the General Assembly. |
| Louisiana | in the presence of two witnesses, and signed by each party who executed it, by each witness, and by each notary public before whom it was executed | La. Civ. Code art. 1833(A) | A transfer of immovable property must be made by authentic act or by act under private signature. |
| South Carolina | the signing must be acknowledged by the grantor, mortgagor, vendor, or lessor in the presence of two witnesses | S.C. Code § 30-5-30(B) | before any deed or other instrument in writing can be recorded in this State, it must be acknowledged or proved by the method described in subsection (A)(1), (A)(2), or (B) |
Where this came from
Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 7 sources this dataset was assembled from.
- cga.ct.govhttps://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_821.htm#sec_47-5
- flsenate.govhttps://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/689.01
- codes.findlaw.comhttps://codes.findlaw.com/ga/title-44-property/ga-code-sect-44-5-30/
- codes.findlaw.comhttps://codes.findlaw.com/ga/title-44-property/ga-code-sect-44-2-15/
- legis.la.govhttps://www.legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.aspx?d=109072
- legis.la.govhttps://www.legis.la.gov/Legis/Law.aspx?d=109078
- scstatehouse.govhttps://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t30c005.php
Machine-readable
- data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
- Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
- data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
- How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.
Set your AI assistant up to use this
Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.
{
"mcpServers": {
"referencesource": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
}
}
}Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project
Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:
When a question needs "Real estate deed witness requirements by US state — quoted from the state's own statute", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `real-estate-deed-witness-requirements-by-state`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.