If you need someone to act on your behalf in legal matters, you will probably need to issue a Power of Attorney. This formal document provides another person with the authority to act on your behalf for a specific purpose or may be issued for general use in many matters.

Issuing a Power of Attorney is common practice in both business and personal proceedings when you need someone to act on your behalf. Using a Power of Attorney in another country can save people the time and expense of traveling abroad to deal with legal issues.

When issuing a Power of Attorney (POA) to an overseas solicitor, lawyer, notary, or agent, you may be asked to obtain an apostille on the document. If the country where the document is to be presented is not a member of The Hague Convention, then you may also need to obtain further embassy attestation stamps.

Prior to the apostille or attestation of a Power of Attorney, you may be required to get attestation from the following departments:

• Notary Public Attestation: Notary Public Attestation serves as an official confirmation from a licensed notary public that an authentic document has been signed, witnessed, and verified by all parties involved.
• Home Department Attestation: Attestation from the home department is an essential certification process but it only requires non-educational certificates. Home department attestation makes any non-educational document suitable for submission for an international verification procedure.
• SDM Attestation: SDM-Sub Divisional Magistrate Attestation is done prior to Embassy Attestation also. If you are traveling to Non-Hague countries such as UAE, Qatar, Kuwait you need to get an Embassy Attestation for the documents that you will use in a foreign country. For both apostille and embassy attestation purposes, SDM is done.
• COC Attestation: Chamber of Commerce (COC) legalization is a mandatory step to verify the commercial documents like Certificate of Origin, ISO Certificate, Trade License, Power of Attorney, etc.
• MEA Attestation: MEA-Ministry of External Affairs attestation is required for multiple reasons including work visa, student visa, and resident visa; execute business from a foreign country, etc. In case the documents are not validated for their authenticity, one can face difficulty or rejection to stay in a foreign country.

The procedures will vary according to the destination country.