The legal value of a fax, country by country
What holds everywhere, what changes, and where to check.
There is no single answer, and a page claiming to tell you what a fax is worth in ten countries would be lying to you. Two things are nonetheless true everywhere: admissible and sufficient are two separate questions, and a fax is a copy whose weight depends on the record you kept. What changes from country to country is the form required for a given act. So this page gives the method and the official sources for the seven destinations served, rather than a table of conclusions nobody here can guarantee.
What holds just about everywhere
The distinction between admissibility and evidential weight exists in every system we know of, under different names. That a fax may be produced says nothing about what it demonstrates: the first question is procedural, the second is an assessment. Confusing the two is the commonest error on this subject, and it survives every translation.
Formalism is the exception that actually decides. Everywhere, certain acts must take a particular form — a writing, a notarised deed, service through a designated channel — and where a form is prescribed it is not interchangeable. That is almost always where the practical answer to "can I fax this?" is settled, not in some general doctrine about fax.
Finally, a fax is a copy and never an original. What you will be able to demonstrate therefore depends less on the channel than on what you kept: the dated transmission report, read alongside the copy exactly as it went out.
The method, in four steps
Start from the act, not from the channel
The right question is never "what is a fax worth in Spain?" but "does this particular act require a particular form in Spain?". Notice to quit, termination, formal demand and simply sending a document do not follow the same rules in any country.
Look for the text, not for a blog post
The rules on evidence sit in the civil and civil-procedure codes, published free of charge and in consolidated form by each state. The table below gives, for each destination served, the name of the official publication and of the codes concerned.
Look at what the country says about copies
A fax being a copy, the rule on the value of copies is the one that concerns you most directly. Every system has one, and it is often more favourable than people assume — provided the copy's fidelity can be established.
Ask the recipient
This is the step everyone skips, and often the only one that counts. The recipient decides what they accept: a court, an administration or a company each have internal rules, stricter than the law and applying immediately.
Where to check, for the seven destinations served
Names rather than addresses: an official publication does not get renamed, its URLs do — and a dead link on a page about legal value would be worse than no link at all.
| Country | Official database | Texts to consult |
|---|---|---|
| France | LégifranceJournal officiel de la République française |
|
| Portugal | DRE — Diário da República EletrónicoDiário da República |
|
| Canada | Site Web de la législation (Justice Canada), LégisQuébecGazette du Canada / Canada Gazette |
Système bijuridique : common law dans neuf provinces et trois territoires, droit civil au Québec. La question se pose donc deux fois — au fédéral et dans la province concernée. |
| Germany | Gesetze im InternetBundesgesetzblatt |
|
| Spain | BOE — Códigos electrónicosBoletín Oficial del Estado |
|
| Italy | NormattivaGazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana |
|
| Belgium | JustelMoniteur belge / Belgisch Staatsblad |
|
The question to ask, and who to ask
For an ordinary send, the question goes to the recipient: "do you accept this document by fax, and in what form?". The answer takes one phone call and beats any amount of research, because it covers what is actually going to happen.
For a send on which a right depends — a deadline, a termination, a formal notice — the question goes to a legal professional in the country concerned. That is the one moment where the gap between "it is admissible" and "it is sufficient" is paid in cash, and no website can settle it for you.
Frequently asked questions
- Does a fax carry the same weight across the European Union?
- No. The law of evidence and the formal requirements attached to acts remain national: the Union harmonises certain areas, but not the general question of what a transmitted document demonstrates. Reasoning that holds in France does not transpose as-is to Germany.
- Why do you not publish a comparison table by country?
- Because such a table would be wrong somewhere from day one. Summarising a country's law of evidence in one cell takes a current national source and local legal review; without that, you produce an approximation on precisely the subject where an approximation costs the reader the most.
- What is a fax sent from one country to another worth?
- It is generally the law of the forum — the court that might hear the case — that governs how evidence is handled, and contracts often designate the jurisdiction and applicable law themselves. In other words, the question is not where you send from but where the dispute would be decided.
Continue exploring
The most useful pages to carry on with your fax.
- What proof by fax establishes, and where it stops.
- Send free faxes to seven countries covered by our direct carrier links. Search a destination to find its dial code and number format.
- What the regulation requires, and what it never says.
- Seven criteria, three channels, and the question that actually decides.