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E-Filing in Michigan Courts
Policies and Standards: No. 4, February 27, 2020
3. Placement of Signature, Date, and Court Seal
All SCAO-approved court forms requiring a signature with a date and court seal will
contain a specified mark above the standard signature line to denote where the
eSignature with Seal icon must be placed for affixing a signature, date, and watermark
seal of the court stamp. The stamp can be affixed as a single task using an icon in
MiFILE.
Placement of the icon is important so that the date rests slightly above the signature line
and so that the seal covers some portion of text in the order or judgment being signed.
Figure 3. Examples of Proper and Improper Placement of Signature Icon.
Proper Improper
After the icon is placed on a document and either the document is routed to a clerk or
the ad hoc task is executed that would send the document to a print queue, the
signature, date, and watermark seal of the court will be rendered and burned into the
document. Otherwise, the signature, date, and watermark seal of the court will be
burned into the document when it is accepted by the clerk for placement in the document
management system.
4. Effect of Signature and Watermark Court Seal Stamp
The date a judgment or order is signed is the date of entry, and it is the date recorded in
the court’s case management system for the case history (register of actions).
Standards do not require that a signed order or judgment be stamped with a file date
before placement in the case file.
MiFILE will be configured to not affix a date and time stamp when signed orders and
judgments have the eSignature and Seal stamp in place and are accepted by the clerk
for placement in the case file. The following is an example of a dual-purpose form with a
FILED stamp and a subsequent signature, date, and watermark seal of the court stamp
on the order.