Forged Documents Are Void: Third Department Misstates the Law by Incorrectly Limiting the Doctrine to Deeds

“Hard” Cases, or Rather Bad Facts, Make Bad Law

I often applaud the legal reasoning of the appellate courts of the State of New York as I chronicle the court decisions on fraud topics in this Blog. Unfortunately, I do call out decisions when they misstate or confuse the law, and the recent decision of the Third Department in Jared V. v Nikki X, 2026 NY Slip Op 00176 (3d Dep’t Decided Jan. 15, 2026) indeed misstated and misapplied the governing law relating to forged documents. There is a loose legal adage that “bad facts” make bad law. Meaning, trying to squeeze a square set of facts into a legal round hole can torture and warp the correct legal principle. I explain below.

Forged Documents are Void, Not Merely Voidable

I have written often on the distinction between “void” and “voidable” documents or transactions.

As I have explained:

Forgeries Equal Void Transactions

As it relates to fraud, a document that contains a forged signature of the party who appears to have signed the document is simply not valid at all from the inception (the courts use the Latin phase “void ab initio”). In law, such a document is deemed never to have existed legally since the person who is claimed to have signed it and agreed to whatever is stated in it did not actually sign it and never intended to do so. That is the nature of the forgery.

Read the full blog post here.