We could hear someone sobbing in the background. The attorney on the phone said he was with a very distraught client and wondered if we thought could help. The client had fathered a child with a woman and she had died. They were engaged to be married and the little girl was the center of their lives, but the father wasn’t in a position at that moment to take custody of the child. So while he was getting a new life in order for him as a parent, he accepted the offer of her parents to take care of the baby.
He’d done it all – moved, gotten a new job that paid more, arranged for daycare and had even set up a support network with his family and friends. Then he went to the grandparents and asked for the baby. They told him no. He got the police and when he arrived with the officers at hand, they provided him with a document saying he had signed away his legal rights to the child. The paper they produced said exactly that. The thing was, he had never signed such a document and knew it was forgery of signature on that paper. But the officers wouldn’t insist he could take the girl. He was crushed thinking he would never be able to get his little girl because it was just their word against his.
Document forgery is a crime and a forensic examiner can provide an opinion based in specific, refined data and expert handwriting analysis. The handwriting analyst requires examples of the subject’s signature – many examples and they should be on documents that are official such as tax returns, cancelled checks, leases, deeds, mortages and notes. The identity of signers is often checked on these documents.
The handwriting analyst conducts a painstaking handwriting analysis test to compare the original signatures and the signature in question. In this case he was able to make an opinion that the document was indeed forged and provide expert documentation showing the variances.
They were able to settle out of court because the grandparents admitted the forgery. He didn’t press charges against them. He just wanted his little girl.
-Brenda McGinley, CEO, All in Investigations, All in Investigations