In family matters, the evidence is usually a paper signed between relatives, without witnesses, and disputed years later. The examination answers who signed the will, the power of attorney or the maintenance receipt.
In families, documents are born of trust: the receipt written at home, the power of attorney signed in hospital, the informal contract. The dispute comes later, often when the person who signed has died or no longer remembers.
Forensic handwriting and questioned document examination are among the most requested examinations in these cases. The examination says what is genuine, what was altered and how far the material allows one to conclude. The legal effect of each finding remains with the lawyer and the judge.
A genuine signature does not make everything attached to it genuine. A probate case with genuine receipts and forged proof of payment is in Forensic Services by Practice Area, in the Real Estate section.
Did the signature come from the hand of the person named? The examination compares the questioned item with specimens from the same period, including when the person has already died.
When a third party signs at the request of the person named, the object of the examination changes: who signed by proxy (a rogo), and whose fingerprint is placed on the document.
Screenshots, messages and audio in divorce, custody and allegations of parental alienation. The WhatsApp examination verifies the integrity and authenticity of the conversations and, when a voice is in dispute, forensic phonetics compares the speaker.
Spyware installed by a former spouse, or a shared account that was never disconnected. The examination is done on the device of the person who suspects, before any clean-up.
Degenerative diseases, accidents and ageing itself change the stroke. Tremor, fragmentation and loss of fluency appear. And the family starts to dispute the signature because it "does not look like" the usual one.
Even so, signing remains an automatic gesture. The writer's habits leave traces in the altered stroke, and it is through them that the examination recognises the same hand. The expert in elderly signatures also separates the tremor of illness from the tremor of someone slowly copying another person's signature. Adriano Vallim has handled many such cases: the difference was visible, and the hand was the same. That conclusion requires specimens from the same stage of life, not from twenty years earlier.
A life insurance case involving elderly business partners, in which the insurer alleged a forged signature and both signatures examined were genuine, is in Forensic Services in Insurance and Cyber Claims.
A father paid child maintenance in cash, at the home of the girl's mother, and took a receipt. When the mother was out, the person who received the money and signed was the daughter, a minor. The mother denied the signatures and said she never received the amounts. With several months in dispute, the father was eventually jailed for non-payment.
The forensic handwriting examination looked at the signatures on the receipts and at initials that appeared next to them, whose authorship the mother denied.
The signatures were the daughter's, and the initials were the mother's. The receipts were legitimate. Whether a receipt signed by a minor counts as discharge is a legal question, and its characterisation rests with the court. The examination answered what was its to answer: who signed and who initialled.
See also
Forensic Handwriting and Questioned Document Examination → Examination of Initials and Paraphs → Signature by Proxy → WhatsApp and Chat Examination → Forensic Phonetics and Voice Examination → Digital Counter-Espionage → For Individuals →