An act under private signature in Louisiana is a written agreement the parties sign themselves, without a notary or witnesses present at the moment of signing. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1837 requires only that each party sign the document, and once they do, it is immediately binding between them.1FindLaw. Louisiana Civil Code Art. 1837 – Act Under Private Signature It stands opposite the authentic act, which is executed before a notary and two witnesses.2Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1833 – Authentic Act The difference between the two forms controls how a court treats the document, whether it reaches people outside the agreement, and in some cases whether the transaction is even legally possible.
What Makes a Private Act Valid
The requirements are short. The document does not have to be written by the parties; a typed draft, a lawyer’s template, or a form from a book all work. What Article 1837 demands is that every party actually sign. A person who cannot sign their name may use a mark intended to serve as a signature.
Everyone signing also needs legal capacity. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1918 excludes unemancipated minors, interdicted persons placed under legal guardianship by a court, and anyone who lacked the ability to reason at the moment of signing.3Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1918 – General Statement of Capacity A contract signed by someone in one of those categories can be challenged and potentially voided. When capacity could later be in doubt, an authentic act creates a stronger record that the signer understood what they were doing.
Private acts carry most of Louisiana’s everyday transactions. Leases, personal loans, vehicle sales, service contracts, and promissory notes are routinely handled this way. No filing, notarization, or other formality is needed for the agreement to bind the signers.
Transactions a Private Act Cannot Handle
Some transactions are void if attempted by private act. The clearest is a donation between living persons. Article 1541 requires every lifetime gift to be made by authentic act, and the penalty for ignoring the rule is absolute nullity: the donation does not exist in the eyes of the law, no matter what the parties intended.4Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1541 – Form Required for Donations A gift of property to a family member documented only by private signature can be struck down years later.
Real estate sits in a middle ground. Article 2440 allows a sale of immovable property to be made by either authentic act or act under private signature, so a private act is technically valid for selling a house or a piece of land.5Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Article 2440 – Sale of Immovable Property In practice, lenders and title insurers almost always insist on an authentic act because it carries stronger evidentiary weight and supports faster remedies if a mortgage is involved. Conventional mortgages require a written contract but not necessarily an authentic act.6Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Article 3287 – Conventional Mortgage
Matrimonial agreements can also be made by private act, but the document must be duly acknowledged by both spouses to be valid. Skipping that step is not a technicality; it can leave the agreement unenforceable.
Why Acknowledgment Matters
Acknowledgment is the single most useful thing you can add to a private act. Under Article 1836, once a party acknowledges their signature, the document is treated as genuine on its face and comes into evidence without further proof.7Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1836 – Act Under Private Signature Duly Acknowledged Without acknowledgment, the other side can deny the signature in court and force you to prove it.
There are two routes. A party can recognize the signature as their own before a court, or they can do so before a notary or other authorized officer in the presence of two witnesses. The notary route is more common. The witnesses have to be present during the acknowledgment itself; they do not need to have witnessed the original signing.
An acknowledged private act is self-authenticating. The judge accepts it at face value without witnesses or handwriting experts, and the burden to prove forgery falls on the person challenging it rather than the person relying on it. For any document you might one day need to enforce, acknowledgment up front is worth far more than the cost of proving authenticity years later.
Electronic Signatures and Remote Notarization
Louisiana’s Uniform Electronic Transactions Act treats electronic records and signatures as legally equivalent to paper. Under Revised Statute 9:2607, a signature or record cannot be denied legal effect solely because it is electronic, and an electronic signature satisfies any law requiring a signature.8Justia. Louisiana Revised Statutes 9-2607 – Legal Recognition of Electronic Records, Electronic Signatures, and Electronic Contracts A private act signed through a platform like DocuSign or Adobe Sign is valid in Louisiana as long as both parties consent to conducting the transaction electronically.
Acknowledgment can also happen remotely. Under Revised Statute 35:623, a notarial act performed through audio-visual technology satisfies the requirement that a party appear before a notary, provided the process meets the technical and identity-verification standards in the statute.9Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Revised Statutes 35-623 – Remote Online Notarial Act The notary has to be physically located in Louisiana during the session. You can sign a private act electronically and get it acknowledged remotely without anyone sharing a room.
Recording When Real Estate Is Involved
A private act about immovable property binds the signers from the moment they sign, but it means nothing to anyone else until it is filed in the public records. Article 1839 states that an instrument involving immovable property has effect against third persons only from the time it is filed for registry in the parish where the property is located.10Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1839 – Transfer of Immovable Property Third persons include later buyers, creditors, and anyone else with a potential claim to the same property.
The risk is concrete. If you buy land by private act and never record it, the seller can sell the same property to someone else. If that second buyer files first, they win. Louisiana’s public records doctrine protects people who rely on what the records show, and an unrecorded agreement is invisible to those records. For any transaction involving land or buildings, treat recording with the Clerk of Court in the parish where the property sits as a required final step.
What Happens If the Other Side Denies the Signature
If the document was never acknowledged, you face one of the more frustrating positions in Louisiana litigation. Under Article 1838, a party against whom a private act is asserted must either acknowledge the signature or deny it.11Justia. Louisiana Civil Code Article 1838 – Party Must Acknowledge or Deny Signature If they deny it, the burden falls on you to prove the signature is genuine by whatever means of proof are available: handwriting comparison, testimony from someone familiar with the signature, testimony from a witness to the signing, or forensic analysis. Courts have wide discretion in weighing that evidence, and the process adds time and expense to what might otherwise be a straightforward contract dispute.
With an acknowledged act, the challenger carries the burden of proving forgery. That shift often decides the case.
How Long You Have to Enforce a Private Act
Louisiana uses the term “prescription” where most states say “statute of limitations.” Under Civil Code Article 3499, a personal action is subject to a ten-year prescriptive period unless another statute sets a different timeframe.12Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Civil Code Article 3499 – Personal Action That ten-year window generally governs lawsuits to enforce obligations created by a private act, such as collecting on an unpaid promissory note or enforcing a contract for services.
The clock usually starts when the obligation becomes due rather than when the document was signed. A promissory note due on a specific date starts prescription on that date. Ten years of inaction without filing suit or taking some other step that interrupts prescription extinguishes the claim. Filing a lawsuit or receiving a partial payment can interrupt the period and restart the clock. If you hold a private act that someone has failed to honor, do not assume the time to act on it is unlimited.