Sign here, not there

Please sign where indicated. It seems like an obvious instruction with clear direction. People have lots of documents to
sign, not just official legal paperwork, so you’d expect them to be familiar with the concept. I have lost count of the number of times that I have written these four small, apparently simple, words.

I have also lost count of
how many signatures end up anywhere but where indicated. And I know that I am not the only practitioner to encounter this problem.

My colleagues have shared their tales of woe. They include: signatures on almost every page of the document except by the execution clause, signatories using a pencil instead of the standard pen,
and signing next to the wrong party’s name. I could go on.

Also, which is perhaps more telling, entire product lines have been devised to indicate exactly where a signature should be, such as bright yellow arrows with ‘sign here’ in bold font. Yet, no matter how many of those I affix to my freshly engrossed documents before sliding them into an envelope, I am still unsure what will be returned.

Admittedly, some documents are more complicated than others. Wills, for example, require two witness signatures. And there is copious case law where things have gone wrong: witnesses leaving the room to make the tea after signing their name and, most recently, spouses signing each other’s wills in error rather than their own (Marley v Rawlings).

Accordingly, it is standard practice to send step-by-step instructions with any will or testamentary document. But
it still does not guarantee
the return of a correctly
signed document.

This brings me to the conclusion that the only solution is close supervision while the document is being signed, which explains the many hours that I spent, as a trainee, in the back of a black cab, winding through the backstreets of London clutching, as though it was
my most prized possession,
a document that I had been instructed to take to the
client for their signature.

However, even this technique is not foolproof. It requires the delivery person to understand how and where the document should be signed (something that should not be taken for granted with nervous first-seat trainees) and that they have hawk-like vision.

After all, it takes a split second for an overly enthusiastic client with a pen to leave their mark.

This became obvious to me last month when I escorted two clients, both executors of a will, to an independent solicitor to swear to the executors’ oath before I applied for grant of probate of the will. The process, for those unfamiliar, requires that the executors sign the
oath, which is witnessed by the independent solicitor, then sign the top of the deceased’s will.

The first executor signed as appropriate then I turned my attention to the second executor to repeat the process. Yet, even with two experienced solicitors present, we both missed the moment when the first executor took his pen to
the deceased’s will and amended the way his name
was presented. Shock horror!

Every private client solicitor knows that wills, once signed, are sacrosanct. Even the slightest mark, just by a paper-clip indentation, for example, can lead to problems with the Probate Registry
when later proving the will.

I am now left with explaining to the registry why the will is
not quite in its original state. Sadly, for the estate, this
could be quite an expensive
and time-consuming scribble
to sort out.

Of course, there’s also
the instruction that usually follows ‘please do not date
the document’. But that’s another story. SJ

Kate Davies is a solicitor at Wedlake Bell

Copyright & permissions