The following US states require vehicle titles to be notarized in order for the owner to release ownership interest in (in other words, sign over to a buyer) a vehicle:

Notarization is the process by which a notary public (or other licensed public official, such as a justice of the peace) officially witnesses the signing of a document, verifies the identity of the signers, and ensures that they are signing voluntarily and understand the contents of the document.

This process helps to prevent fraud and provides an added layer of authenticity and trust to important legal and financial documents - such as the transfer of a vehicle.

Notarizing a document takes less than five minutes, and costs $5 or $10.

Notaries are everywhere in the United States. Some chains (UPS Stores, for example) require their notaries to view a US identity document for all signers. It’s best practice, therefore, to call ahead and confirm that a notary is present, and can use the identity document that you have.

In the US, notaries are authorized by the US states. A notary does not have to be authorized by the same US state that issued the vehicle's title.

We have received vehicle titles from several different states that were notarized by notaries in the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, Costa Rica, and Chile. In our experience, the notary does not have to be a US notary for the notarization to be accepted by the Montana vehicle registration authorities.

Montana now accepts most documents notarized by a Remote Online Notarization process, whereby the notary witnesses you sign an electronic version of the document via video conference.

However, because there is no such thing as an authentic electronic version of a vehicle title - only the physical title document is authentic - title documents cannot be notarized directly via a remote online notarization process.

If you have a title that needs to be notarized, and you cannot get the physical document notarized, you can authorize another party to sign the title on your behalf by notarizing a power of attorney (POA) document via a remote online notarization process.

The person that you appoint via POA can then take your physical title and a print-out of the remotely online notarized POA to a notary, and have your title notarized that way.