This post is continued from yesterday’s post regarding forgery. Cina L. Wong is the forgery expert and her credentials are amazing.
Q. Can you give some examples of forgery issues that you have dealt with due to divorce?
A. It’s not uncommon for one spouse to take loans/credit lines out and make the other spouse a co-signer on the loan and let’s not forget documents that are altered.
I worked on a case that involved a legal Quit Claim Deed. The husband took the Quit Claim Deed to the court house to file and prior to handing the document to the clerk of the court, he used “white out” tape to remove his wife’s signature. From a photocopy you could not tell the wife’s name was removed. It wasn’t until the wife obtained the original Quit Claim Deed for me to examine that I could obviously see the correction tape. In this case, she was very lucky to have been able to obtain the original. This is an actual photo from the case showing the white out tape. 
It was his name “& Teresa…” was obliterated from the original typed information. This is called an altered document. The photo was taken with the document on a light table making the white out tape transparent so the writing below became legible.
Q. Regarding altering documents, what are some of the ways to prove a forgery?
A. It’s best to have the original in all cases but that is not possible if someone is trying to hide a “cut and paste” signature on a document. You should keep a private (known only to you) file containing copies of all legal, financial, tax and loan documents you have signed. If at a later date you are dealing with a cut and paste signature matter, you can hope that the perpetrator used a copy of your signature from one of the legal documents you have hidden in your file. Then you can show that you have a copy of the exact match to the signature on the fraudulent document.
Q. If a woman is suspicious that her husband has forged anything, what should she do?
A. The wife needs to call a forensic handwriting expert. This expert will guide her through the process. The wife will be told that she needs to collect handwriting or signature samples around the time period of the questioned document. For example, if she suspects that her signature was forged on a loan document dated September 2010, she will need to find contemporaneous signature samples around August, September and October of 2010. That would be best reflective of her signature at that time period.
Then the questioned document (original if available) and the handwriting samples are sent to the forensic handwriting expert.
Next a laboratory examination is conducted.
Women become vulnerable to forgery situations when they hand all of the financial responsibilities to their husbands. The husband handles all legal documents and even the tax returns. She never questions him and gives him permission to sign legal and tax documents for her. The problem is, she is still responsible for everything even though she does not take an active role. Since she has taken a passive role to such matters and has handed control over to her husband, she is responsible for whatever is filed in the tax return. What if her husband files false information on the tax return? Even if she is not interested in taxes or land documents, she should at least hire her own accountant or attorney to review the documents before she signs them. She should make this a habit in the beginning of a marriage to establish a procedure of handling things. “Honey, this is not my area of expertise, so I’m just going to have a tax accountant to review it before I sign it.” Another option might be to say, “I’ll sign the tax form later. I want to have a chance to read it.” Then have someone review it before you sign it.
I have a girlfriend who glazes over when you mention 1+1. She hates numbers so much that she allows her tax attorney/husband to sign her tax returns. This is even after she found out that he has had a mistress on the side for 10 years (he cheated at least 3-4 times before he took up a long term mistress). She has been separated for 3-4 years but still has her estranged husband who is a tax attorney do her taxes. I tell her that he could be manipulating figures, shifting money and she would never know. It’s free all right, but it may cost her in the end. What a shame.
Please listen to an expert who deals with these issues on a regular basis.
Photo: velvettangerine
