Art. 2635.Authentic Evidence Submitted With Petition

Article 2635 spells out exactly what a creditor has to submit with the petition to earn the right to executory process. The list runs to three items: authentic evidence of the note, bond, or other instrument evidencing the debt; authentic evidence of the act of mortgage or privilege on immovable property — Louisiana's civil-law term for real estate — importing a confession of judgment; and, for movable property, Louisiana's term for personal property, the act of mortgage or privilege importing a confession of judgment, which can be either an authentic act or a private signature duly acknowledged.

That last distinction matters. An authentic act is executed before a notary and witnesses and carries a built-in presumption of genuineness. A private signature is an ordinary signed document, without a notary present, but one that has since been duly acknowledged — formally verified in a manner the law recognizes — so that it too can support executory process for movable property even though it started out as a private writing rather than a notarized one.

Paragraph B keeps the requirement from becoming absolute in every context: authentic evidence is necessary only in the cases, and to the extent, that the law requires it, leaving room for statutes governing particular kinds of collateral to set their own terms. It also addresses a narrow but recurring dispute — a note that states one figure for attorney fees while the mortgage document states another. A variance of that kind does not by itself defeat the right to use executory process; it is not treated as the sort of mismatch that undermines the underlying proof of the debt and the mortgage.