§ 121.015.Private Seal or Scroll Not Required

One sentence retiring a formality that once controlled whether a document was binding.

A private seal or scroll may not be required on a written instrument other than an instrument made by a corporation.

The seal being retired here is the party’s, not the officer’s. A notary still seals the certificate; what this removes is any requirement that the signer affix a seal to the instrument.

A "scroll" is the written substitute for a wax seal — the word "Seal" or a drawn flourish beside a signature, used by people who owned no seal ring.

The historical stakes were real. At common law a sealed instrument was a different legal creature from an unsealed one: it carried its own presumption of consideration, and it was governed by a longer limitations period.

Making the seal unnecessary removed a trap. A document was otherwise vulnerable because a formality nobody understood had been omitted.

The corporate exception is a survival of a different idea. A corporation acts through agents, and the corporate seal was the traditional evidence that an act was the company’s rather than the signer’s own.

Note what the section says. It says a seal may not be required — not that a seal is ineffective. A party may still use one; nobody may insist on it.

For a corporation, the exception preserves whatever other law requires, rather than imposing a seal requirement of its own.