I’m really confounded by the fact that in this day and age, when everything has gone digital, it’s still SO necessary to have someone’s physical signature on things.
For instance:
Say you purchased a small inflatable watercraft, used, from a private seller. Then it turns out that you need to register it at the BMV in order to use it with an electric motor. You have no bill of sale; it never occurred to you that you would need one for this. The BMV gives you a bill of sale form, tells you to get it signed by the seller, and then come back.
“Can this be handled over the phone?”
“No. You need to have the seller’s physical signature on the paper.”
You call the guy who sold it to you, who lives an hour and a half away. He gives you permission to just write his signature on the bill of sale - in other words, forge it.
This can’t be legal though, can it? And, if not, why? Why is it so incredibly important for the BMV to have this guy’s actual physical signature on the paper?
I don’t get it. EVERYTHING is digital now. This insistence on signatures seems so primitive.
Well, my department’s guy-who-handles-interfacing-with-the-HR-department had me send him an e-mail giving him permission to sign my contract paperwork for me, since he had to sign it while I was away and my contract expired. He said “I signed it for you, just send me an e-mail giving me authorization to do so, because HR will want that.”
So I would get some kind of e-mail or other written proof that he authorized you to do so, since I would imagine the only time you’d get in trouble is if he started claiming that you forged it without permission… not a really “GQ” answer, but hey, if it’s okay to do it at a big public university, it must be okay for a private watercraft sale, right?
Is there some database of signatures that they check all signed documents like bills of sale against at the BMV? Or do they just assume the signature is correct, on the “honor system”? If the latter, then I ask again, what is the point of doing it at all?
I used to do stuff like that. If we needed an official signature at work, I’d call my boss (or somebody higher if necessary) to get their authorization. Then I’d sign the actual document with my name and a notation I had signed it with their authorization.
I’m told by a constable I’ve used for eviction notices and such that the scenario in the OP is perfectly okay. So long as the person being signed for is prepared to acknowledge the signature as his or her own, then you’re good.
I’ve done this with court orders. Needed something signed by a judge that won’t accept a faxed signature, other lawyer is out of town. Called the other lawyer, explained that we got the picky judge, obtained permission, then I signed his name, under it wrote “by <my name, with permission>”, signed it, filed it, sent a stamped filed copy to the other guy.
My secretary does this sometimes. She’s allowed to sign my name to routine correspondence, like form letters to clients advising of an office appointment/court date, or cover letters for documents I send to clients. Important stuff gets an original signature from me.
Have you considered faxing the bill of sale form to the seller, and having him sign it and fax it back? That should be okay, unless the form itself is not copyable.
How in the world would it be. It does not purport to be Joe Vendor’s original signature (the forging of which would be fraud); it is what it purports to be, the writing of Joe Vendor’s name, by his instructions, by Ben Buyer, who annotates it accordingly. So long as Joe Vendor is willing to stand by his word, that he told Ben to sign his name for him, it’s a signature by agency. Trusted staff sign things for business principals all the time; so long as they’re acting on the instructions of the man whose name they’re signing, they’re not committing fraud.
Think about notaries for a minute. While today notarization has turned into a legally-required-to-be-objective third party guarantee that the signature on the document is indeed that of the particular individual empowered to do what the document is doing (Joe Smith proving to a notary that he is indeed the Joseph Vaarsuvius Smith who owns the car he is transferring the title to, ?Boris Bureaucrat affirming before a notary he is indeed the Mayor authorized to commit the city to $2,000,000 in bonded indebtedness), it started out as a means by which a literate person could witness the mark of an illiterate artisan or farmer whom he knows, after assuring himself that the illiterate person does in fact intend to contract for what the document purports to be doing. It was the notary’s signature that validated the document, because anybody could claim that Jens the Wagonwright had made his mark here, see.
The function of a signature is to attest in writing that you knowingly agreed to do what the document you sign purports to do; while you should, ceteris paribus, sign for yourself, you can authorize someone to sign in your behalf, and their signature, by your direction, is valid and not fradulent.
Its not a “legal” issue. Its a practical issue. If a person allows you to forge his signature then he is unlikely to disown the same when confronted and you are unlikely to get into trouble.
Per OP; you need signatures to commit people to something, a signature means that a person has read or seen the document in question. Its an easy quick way.
In Massachusetts (where Sal Ammoniac is from), we have (usually) elected constables, employed by the municipality, for serving legal documents. I am reasonably confident that they only handle civil process stuff, nothing in the criminal side of the law. I can see a constable knowing the peculiarities of whose signature counts and under what circumstances - it’s a big portion of his or her job.
Today is no different than days of yore when it comes to a person signing something. Using digital technology doesn’t somehow eliminate the need to have authentication, like a signature. The availability of digital transmission of data just makes it more of an annoyance to get it.
The digital technology needed to provide a signature has been available for quite some time but the average person doesn’t have it or understand it. You have to get a digital certificate. This technology is actually superior (IMHO) to a wet-ink signature on a piece of paper, which can’t be objectively authenticated for false positives (that is, if a person says, “That’s not my signature,” it’s hard to prove that it is). If a person controls his cert properly, it is virtually forge-proof.
I heard someone at work referring to a “digital signature” which really should mean a cert, but it turned out they meant a digital *image *of a signature. IMHO (IANAL) this looks nice but is worthless for legal authentication because it is so easily copied, much easier than forging a traditional signature. Also very difficult for the signer to look at it and recall whether they actually signed it. “Well, that *looks *like mine, but we used exactly the same image on 100 documents so I can’t be sure someone didn’t copy it.”
Not necessarily, “constable” is just a term for the paperwork delivering arm of the sheriff’s office in a given locale. We’ve got them here in southeastern Pennsylvania.
The guy who brings you your eviction notice, or court summons, or other such deliver-it-in-person papers, but who does not have standard “police authority” is called a constable.
Here’s a good one. We bought a Nano from the iPod store the other day, and they do all the sales right there at the display stand. They have little iPods that have credit card attachments, and so we ran our card, and then, my SO had to sign the pad with his finger.
The finger signature of course looked absolutely nothing like his real signature. So the signature is mandatory…but completely useless. If someone were to compare it, it would look like a child forged his signature.
I’m with the OP - it seems silly to maintain this thing of true signatures. Can’t we find a better way?
It is not like signatures prior to these amazing digital times were are that good at authenticating things. When it really really matters You get signatures notarized which adds a licensed third party to the verification process.
People have been working on the problem of authentication for a long long time and have not come up with solutions that are cheap, secure and easy to use. There are a fair number that get cheap and easy to use at the cost of security.
I doubt they ever check signatures. Even banks rarely check signatures. Most people don’t even sign the same way every time. Staples employees always check your signature against the one on the back of your credit card. I’ve been sent there several times with other peoples cards, I just make a scribble, and nobody has ever gave me a problem.
I bought a car once from a private seller, and had to return it. The seller wrote me a check from his girlfriends checking account, and signed it himself. When I brought it to her bank to cash it, I had to wait while they found the signature card from the account. They had to call a supervisor in, but eventually they cashed the check.