Tonight I got a call from a gal who is filing petitions with the probate court. She is attempting to administer the estate of her father who has passed away intestate. In our phone call, she tells me that she is divorced and her driver’s license has both her maiden and married names on it. For explanation, I’ll use Jane Doe Smith as her name. She doesn’t want the paperwork notarized as Jane Doe Smith. She wants only Jane Doe listed in the notarial block because that’s how she presents herself. The documents she has been provided are from the self-service division of the Court. I know from experience that these documents are generic in fashion when it comes to the petitioner’s signature block.
Here’s my question. Since the identification defines her full name to be Jane Doe Smith, and the signature block for the document doesn’t specify a particular structure to the name as it does in loan docs, will the notarization be legitimate if I list her name within the notarial block to be simply Jane Doe or does it need to follow how she is defined on her identification?
As an aside, I declined the request. More so because the longer I spoke with her the more uneasy I became over the matter and felt that this might be a fraudulent transaction. Would you have completed the notarization?
I think you got the most important part right: you felt there was something wrong with the situation, so you declined. If I had a similar situation, and everything seemed on the up-and-up, I would have been careful not to give legal advice, since I’m not an attorney.
A thought that I would not have said aloud is that if she’s the daughter, she is probably named in the will, and maybe other things like the house deed and insurance policies. How is her name written on all these documents? Would it be a problem if she is named differently in different documents? That’s a question for a lawyer, so I would have encouraged her to talk to one.
If a lawyer had advised her that it would be fine to file the court form signing Jane Doe but her only current photo ID said Jane Doe Smith, I would require a credible witness to say that she usually uses the name Jane Doe. Following VT law, I would ID the witness and administer a written verification on oath or affirmation to the credible witness where the witness IDs Jane. I would keep that verification in my records. I would note both the credible witness and the driver license in my journal.
Father supposedly died intestate, so no will. No other documents specific to the estate either. She was filing to have the need for an estate administrator waived. What bothered me the most was her anxiousness to get the documents notarized at the last minute and the fact that she had been living in NYC for several years but had an NV driver’s license.
Regardless of all that, what I’m wondering is if everything had been on the up and up and she wasn’t giving off signals of potential fraud, would notarizing the documents with only her first and maiden name have been considered legitimate given that was the name stated on her identification, or could it have posed a potential threat to my commission?
She wasn’t asking for legal advice. She was demanding to have the documents completed and notarized in her maiden name. I made it very clear to her that I was not an attorney and that she should go back to the self-service counter at the court and discuss that with them since that is where she obtained the documents.
My understanding is that people may conduct their affairs under more than one name. For example, with the blessing of IBM intellectual property lawyers, I applied (and later received) patents under both the first names “Gerard” and “Gerry”. (This happened because in one of the applications, a deadline was approaching and there was no time to change “Gerry” to “Gerard”.) As far as I’m concerned, if there’s no signs of fraud, and the person has proof they use the name on the documents, I can put it in the certificate. There may be proof they use some other name as well, but that doesn’t matter. Which one is the “true” or “legal” name? I don’t care, and I’m not convinced there is such a thing as a general purpose legal name.
She may not formally asked for legal advice, but insisting on signing in a particular manner and asking how this can be done is asking, informally for legal advice. There’s a thin, sometimes almost invisible line we don’t want to cross. The Over the Counter desk at the court house have told her to seek advice from an attorney.
Keep in mind every estate need to go through probate and usually requires a probate attorney. She should have sought advice from the probate attorney. Not my First Rodeo.
