There are many steps to follow, and many requirements needed to get a non-lucrative visa for Spain, and one of them is getting your documents apostilled.
In today's podcast, I'm going to talk about what does it mean to apostille documents, how to do it and more.
About Marina 'Travel Experta'
- I am an Experience Collector, World Traveler, Expat Mama and Wife
- I have been an expat for over 20 years, raising 2 trilingual sons
- My family and I have traveled to over 40 countries and counting …
- I’m here to inspire you to travel, move internationally, have fun with your family and so much more!
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Hey, it's Marina, travel experta. Today we're going to be talking about the non lucrative visa process for Spain apostilled services. Are you guys ready for an adventure? Let's begin. Apostilled literally means when you are taking a third party document, for instance, your criminal records, or maybe getting your birth certificate, certificate, whatever, and you need to get it government notarized.
So a notary public is literally the opposite of that. And I have a full episode about getting things notarized. So please go and listen to that separately. But apostilled means that you need to have a government notarized process. So, for instance, you definitely will need to have your criminal records apostilled, right?
So once you get the criminal records and today it's done pretty quickly, a lot of it is done online. In the US. You need to go and give your fingerprint for you to be able to get them sent to you. You get it sent to your email and then you have to take that particular copy. You could just print it out.
And then you could either hire a service, which I did and I spent almost $400 on, and my husband also did that in Guatemala, and he spent like $300 on. However, in Guatemala, in particularly, getting a lawyer to help you with a possible service is much more convenient. But in the US. We didn't know this. And then later on, because it was taking so long, it takes between five to nine weeks.
Remember that it takes five to nine weeks regardless of which country you live in. But I thought with the service, I could get it more expediated not so. And I was getting very stressed out. So we realized that in the US. You can do it on your own just to mail it to the apostilled service.
Super easy to find for $20 versus the $400. And it was the exact same process. So guys, just look into it. It's really simple to do. I would not hire a service.
Now that 2020 hindsight. I did it because I didn't know anything at all. Take my advice, you don't need to. You could just go and send it directly to Washington, DC. Regardless of which state you are doing it from in the United States, and they all come to your address.
You do need to have the actual apostilled service, apostilled letter. That when you go to submit and when you or you mail whatever it is, you have to have that original one. And then with that, if you have to get it translated. For instance, in Guatemala, obviously you don't need to translate it because it's Spanish, but in the US. You do need to go and get it translated.
You will need to get your apostilled things translated just the same. All right, guys, if you have any questions, please let me know. It's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review. Share it with your friends.
And remember to make every day an adventure.