Thumbprints Are Coming
The Sun-Times has a short piece today on SB 0456 which became Public Act 95-0998. We first reported on this bill back in May of 2008. The Sun-Times’ article reflects that the bill will go into effect on June 1. If you scroll down to Sec. 3-102(h), you’ll see that the failure of the notary to get the fingerprint as part of the record doesn’t mean much outside an allegation of fraud:
(h) The failure of a notary to comply with the procedure set forth in this Section shall not affect the validity of the Residential Real Property transaction in connection to which the Document of Conveyance is executed, in the absence of fraud.
Also, if you’re a property owner with some reason to worry about providing your thumbprint, the act has a provision regarding how and when these records will be 
disclosed:
(i) The Notarial Record or other medium containing the thumbprint or fingerprint required by subsection (c)(6) shall be made available or disclosed only upon receipt of a subpoena duly authorized by a court of competent jurisdiction. Such Notarial Record or other medium shall not be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act and shall not be made available to any other party, other than a party in succession of interest to the party maintaining the Notarial Record or other medium pursuant to subsection (d) or (e).
The weirdest part about the whole act is that most of the changes will be nullified by the statute’s own language on July 1, 2013 unless the legislature acts by then to amend the law:
(k) Subsections (a) through (i) shall not apply on and after July 1, 2013.
