Data protection Notary

Information on Data Protection by Notaries

1. Who is responsible, and who can you contact?


We — Notary Dr. Thankmar Wagner, Notary Martin Rochell, and Notary Florian Bleyer—are responsible for processing your personal data. Each of the aforementioned notaries is solely responsible for the area under their respective purview in accordance with data protection regulations. You may direct all data protection inquiries to the respective responsible notary or to our data protection officer as follows:

Responsible Notary
Notary Dr. Thankmar Wagner
Notary Martin Rochell, LL.M.
Notary Florian Bleyer

Address:
Am Stadtgraben 49-51
48143 Münster
Phone: 0251-41863-0
Fax: 0251-41863-20
Email: info@sommerfeld.pro

Data Protection Officer
GDI Gesellschaft für digitale Informationsdienste mbH Attn: Mr. Olaf Tenti
Körnerstraße 45, 58059 Hagen
Phone: 0231-356832-0
Fax: 02331-356832-1
Email: datenschutz@gdi-mbh.eu

2. What data do I process, and where does it come from?

I process personal data that I receive from you directly or from third parties you have authorized (e.g., attorneys, tax advisors, real estate agents, financial institutions), such as

Personal information, e.g., first and last name, date and place of birth, nationality, marital status; in some cases, your birth certificate number;

Contact details, such as postal address, telephone and fax numbers, and email address; by providing your email address, you consent to communication via unencrypted email;

in the case of real estate contracts, your tax identification number;

in certain cases, e.g., for marriage contracts, wills, inheritance contracts, or adoptions, also data regarding your family situation and your assets, as well as, if applicable, information regarding your health or other sensitive data, e.g., because this serves to document your legal capacity;

in certain cases, also data from your legal relationships with third parties, such as file numbers or loan or account numbers at financial institutions.

In addition, I process data from public registers, e.g., the land registry, commercial registers, and association registers.

3. For what purposes and on what legal basis is the data processed?

As a notary, I hold a public office. My official duties are performed in the interest of the general public in ensuring orderly and preventive administration of justice, and thus in the public interest, and in the exercise of official authority (Art. 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)).

Your data is processed exclusively to perform the notarial services requested by you and, where applicable, other parties involved in a transaction, in accordance with my official duties; this includes, for example, drafting deeds, authenticating and executing notarial acts, or providing consultations. The processing of personal data therefore always takes place solely on the basis of the professional and procedural legal provisions applicable to me, which are essentially derived from the Federal Notary Code and the Notarization Act. These provisions also impose a legal obligation on me to process the necessary data (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR). Failure to provide the data I have requested from you would therefore result in my having to refuse to (continue) performing the official act.

4. To whom do I disclose data?

As a notary, I am subject to a legal duty of confidentiality. This duty of confidentiality also applies to all my employees and other persons I have appointed.

I may therefore only disclose your data if and to the extent that I am required to do so in specific cases, e.g., due to reporting obligations to the tax authorities, or to public registries such as the land registry, commercial or association registries, the Central Register of Wills, the Register of Living Wills, courts such as probate, guardianship, or family courts, or government agencies. Within the scope of professional and administrative supervision, I may also be obligated to provide information to the Chamber of Notaries or my administrative supervisory authority, which in turn are subject to an official duty of confidentiality.

Otherwise, your data will only be disclosed if I am obligated to do so based on statements you have made or if you have requested such disclosure.

5. Is data transferred to third countries?

Your personal data will only be transferred to third countries at your specific request or if and to the extent that a party to the deed is resident in a third country.

6. How long will your data be stored?

I process and store your personal data in accordance with my legal retention obligations.

Pursuant to Section 5(4) of the Regulations for Notaries (DONot), the following retention periods apply to the storage of notarial documents:

Deed register, inventory of inheritance contracts, index of names for the deed register, and collection of deeds, including separately stored inheritance contracts (Section 18(4) DONot): 100 years,

Custody register, mass register, index of names for the mass register, list of escrow accounts, general files: 30 years,

Supplementary files: 7 years; the notary may specify a longer retention period in writing no later than at the time of the last substantive processing, e.g., in the case of dispositions of property upon death or in the event of a risk of recourse; such a determination may also be made generally for specific types of legal transactions, such as dispositions of property upon death.

Upon expiration of the retention periods, your data will be deleted or the paper documents destroyed, unless I am obligated to retain them for a longer period pursuant to Article 6(1)(c) of the GDPR due to tax and commercial law retention and documentation obligations (under the German Commercial Code, the German Criminal Code, the Money Laundering Act, or the German Fiscal Code) as well as professional regulations for the purpose of conflict of laws analysis.

7. What are your rights?

You have the right:

  • To request information about whether I process personal data about you; if so, for what purposes I process the data and what categories of personal data I process; to whom the data may have been disclosed; how long the data will be stored; and what rights you have.
  • to have inaccurate personal data concerning you that is stored by me corrected. You also have the right to have me complete any incomplete data record stored by me.
  • To request the erasure of personal data concerning you, provided there is a legally prescribed ground for erasure (see Art. 17 GDPR) and the processing of your data is not required to fulfill a legal obligation or for other overriding reasons within the meaning of the GDPR.
  • To request that I process your data only to a limited extent, e.g., to assert legal claims or for reasons of an important public interest, while I, for example, review your request for rectification or objection, or, if applicable, if I reject your request for erasure (see Art. 18 GDPR).

to object to the processing, provided that such processing is necessary for me to perform my tasks in the public interest or to exercise my official authority, if there are grounds for the objection arising from your particular situation.

  • to lodge a data protection complaint with the supervisory authorities. The supervisory authority responsible for me is: State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, North Rhine-Westphalia, P.O. Box 20 04 44, 40102 Düsseldorf, Phone: 0211/38424-0, Fax: 0211/38424-10, Email: poststelle@ldi.nrw.de

The complaint may be filed with any supervisory authority, regardless of jurisdiction.

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