Brazil is a country of extreme contrasts, where 21st century institutions coexist without embarrassment with 16th century structures. In the justice system, few are as anachronistic as the registry offices: created by the Ordinances of the Kingdom of Portugal, they still reproduce the colonial logic that gave rise to them. Opacity dominates the more than 13 thousand registry offices spread across the country, sustaining an environment of income concentration, inefficiency and power capture.
The distortion is so great that Bruno Carazza dedicates an entire chapter to the topic in “The Father of Privileges”. Despite the constitutional requirement for public examinations since 1988, many registry offices continue, in practice, to be inherited from father to son. The service is slow, expensive and deeply uneven. How can it be that some sheets of paper should cost values linked to the price of the good involved? According to the book, in 2022 alone, the notary system raised R$23.4 billion, or 0.25% of GDP.
In 2021, the National Council of Justice (CNJ) approved a resolution that forced registry offices to publish, on their own websites, a space called “transparency”, which contains data on the amount collected, the remuneration of the person responsible for the service and their expenses.
Inspection on the matter, under the responsibility of state courts, is still in its infancy. In the meantime, some information is already consolidated on the CNJ’s own website, the analysis of which shows that the average monthly remuneration of holders is R$ 141,884.25, almost three times more than that of members of the Judiciary and the .
If transparency in itself is already a problem, the services are not much better. Although, in fact, with the creation of national service portals, many notary offices — in 2025 — have not yet joined these systems, forcing citizens to have to travel in person.
Many do not even have websites where it is possible to properly locate the types of services provided, their requirements and prices. The latter, in turn, varies dramatically from state to state, due to the lack of national regulation on the subject led by Anoreg (Association of Notaries and Registrars).
According to the TCU (Federal Audit Court), the lack of communication of death data by the registry offices to the (National Social Security Institute) leads to thousands of irregular payments to people who have already died. This fact had already been the subject of a complaint by , in order to inspect and fine the registry offices that did not provide the information as determined by the General Law of .
As if all this were not enough, despite the need to reduce bureaucracy to make life easier for ordinary people and companies, the strong lobby in the sector is so great that the project for a new Civil Code, currently under analysis by the Federal Senate, is so generous to the area that it was nicknamed the “Notary’s Code” due to the number of powers it confers on public records.
Even though, in theory, it brings more legal security to the economy, we need to start demanding more transparency, efficiency, standardization and accountability from the sector without delay. The CNJ needs to establish more rigorous control and inspection mechanisms, requiring the disclosure of organized, centralized information in a standardized format. Finally, there is an urgent need for the national unification of fees tables and the decoupling of the value of the service from the value of the good.
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