Skip to content
SAINT-ISIDORE · L-1A FIELD GUIDE

Should old documents be reissued to remove every name difference?

Sources checked:

THE DIRECT ANSWER

First determine whether an explanation and supporting records resolve the issue. Do not pay to create a misleading uniform history or alter authentic evidence.

Scope the document work to the actual discrepancy

Separate retrieval, translation and corporate-record costs from professional assessment and current filing charges. A polished set of matching names cannot replace proof of the legal entities and qualifying relationship. Reissuing everything is the expensive answer to a cheap problem, and it can create a new one: a document reissued today about a period years ago is weaker than the original it replaces, because it records what someone believes now rather than what was recorded then.

Keep the originals, and spend instead on the one or two instruments that explain the differences — a registry extract, a resolution, a certificate of amalgamation. Ask counsel which specific discrepancy actually matters to the test being applied, and scope the retrieval work to that. Any government charge should be confirmed against the current official schedule rather than estimated from an earlier case.

Hypothetical example: a group prices the reissue of several years of employment letters when one dated corporate instrument would have answered the question those letters were meant to address.