Transcript:

Hey, guys. How you doing? This is Joseph Ott here at the Ott Law firm. Working on a case, and we have an issue that’s arisen regarding the authenticity of a signature on a document that purported to convey real estate from the trustee to a non beneficiary lineal descendant. So in this case, there’s a note that’s been written, and there’s a signature at the bottom.

And the allegation is that the grantor before his death had executed this document. But we were looking at it and we have some questions about the validity of the signature. In particular, there are some letters that, to our lay untrained eye, appear to be different from the way the signature was affected in a lot of the other documents.

So the law in the question is what is the law regarding when you can contest the validity of a signature by saying that it’s fake? Interestingly, under Missouri law, you are able to have any witness that is familiar with the signature offer testimony and lay foundation for their belief or opinion that the signature is in fact a fake signature.

So if especially if you have a party that is involved in the litigation and that has a feeling that the document and the signature is fake, they can testify to that without having to establish themselves as an expert in handwriting. Of course, there are experts in handwriting, and I think with an expert, you’re going to get a lot more oomph with your allegation in that there will be a learned statistical analysis of what deviations in the signature in question exist relative to a sample of verified or notarized signatures.

So this is a tactical decision that the lawyer’s going to have to make is, you know, do you want to have your witness testify that they believe it’s fake on the basis of their familiarity with the other documents? Or do you want to spend the money to have the handwriting expert come in? And I would just urge that if you have a party, a plaintiff in a matter that’s going to be testifying to this fact, you want to be real careful about whether or not they’re going to overextend because it’s pretty easy to say that a signature is fake and it’s almost impossible to prove that allegation wrong, especially if the person that signed it is dead. So you’re going to be asking the jury to believe you on that question or the judge. And it’s if it’s self-interested to do so it could damage your credibility with the jury or judge. But again, the flip side is, you know, you’d have to pay the expert and also the expert is going to distract maybe from the flow of the case.

So it’s kind of about how crucial is this documentary? And so that’s what I learned. And I think it’s highly relevant and important to explore. If you have any questions about how to contest the validity of a signature in a legal document, feel free to reach out. Thanks.