My ex-husband forged my signature on a custody document and took me to court

The envelope had the Family Court crest, which is how you know your week is about to get worse. Inside was a typed parenting agreement with my signature at the bottom, dated March 2023, giving David primary custody of Lily and me alternate weekends. I stared at it for a solid minute, waiting for the memory to arrive. It didn’t, because I’d never seen the thing before.

Lily was at school. I was standing in my kitchen in Footscray, holding a piece of paper that said I’d agreed to be a part-time parent. My hands were shaking so bad I had to put it down on the bench. I called three lawyers that morning. The cheapest wanted a five-thousand-dollar retainer. I teach piano two afternoons a week and clean houses the other three. Five grand might as well have been five million.

So I went to court representing myself, which is a special kind of lonely. The courtroom smelled like stale coffee and anxiety. David sat on the other side with a barrister in a navy suit, not looking at me. He was wearing the same glasses he’d worn when we were married, and I remembered how he’d press his thumb against the bridge when he was lying.

Magistrate Pearce was a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain. She flipped through David’s application, asked a few questions, then stopped. She held the document up to the light. I’d have missed it completely—a faint seam running along the bottom of the signature block, like someone had cut out a signature from another letter and photocopied it onto fresh paper.

“This appears to be a pasted copy,” she said. “Not an original signature.”

David’s barrister recovered fast. “Your Honour, my client indicates the document was signed electronically. This is simply a printout of the digital record.”

David nodded. “I have the original on my laptop,” he said. “I can bring it in.”

Magistrate Pearce ordered a handwriting analysis anyway. It came back three weeks later: the signature was a scan of a signature I’d used on a school permission slip in 2022. David had kept it in his email. The analyst’s report used words like “inconsistent” and “artificially reproduced,” but the plain English was that he’d forged it.

At the next hearing, David produced a second “original” with a different date. Same trick, different colour ink. Magistrate Pearce didn’t even bother hiding her sigh.

“Mr. Tran, this is the second document you have presented that appears to be fabricated. I am dismissing your application and referring this matter to Victoria Police for investigation of potential perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice.”

She gave me interim sole custody and told me to come back for a full hearing in six weeks. David didn’t look at me when he left. He was pressing his thumb against the bridge of his glasses.

I picked Lily up from after-school care that afternoon and took her for a milkshake. She asked why I was crying. I told her I was happy. Which was true, mostly.