The Deed He Never Saw Coming

Aransas County Answers

I had called ahead. Not the emergency line, and not out of any desire for drama, but because Denise Aldrich, the attorney I’d spoken to two days earlier, had told me plainly that recording a fraudulent instrument against real property, using a forged notary seal, is a felony offense in Texas, and that the right move, once I had the evidence in hand, was to let law enforcement document the scene rather than try to settle it myself in a living room three states from home.

So I had already spoken to the Aransas County Sheriff’s Office that morning, given them the file number of the fraudulent deed, the notary’s statement, and my own recorded deed, and asked a deputy to meet me at the house at a specific time, the same time I expected to arrive. I did not want a screaming match. I wanted a public record and a badge in the room before anyone had the chance to talk their way around what had already happened on paper.

The deputy who came to the door introduced himself as Deputy Halloran, a calm, unhurried man who had clearly done this exact kind of visit before, in one form or another. He asked to see both deeds side by side. He asked Kurt, directly, where he had obtained the notarized document. Kurt’s story changed twice in under two minutes, first that “a guy at the office” had handled the paperwork, then that he “didn’t remember exactly” who had notarized it, both versions delivered with the same easy confidence he’d used to hand me the folder in the first place.

Deputy Halloran did not raise his voice once. He explained, plainly, that recording a fraudulent deed against a property is a third-degree felony in Texas, that forging or knowingly using a fraudulent notarization is a separate offense on top of that, and that both would be referred to the county attorney’s office for review, along with the notary’s own sworn statement that her seal had been used without her knowledge or consent.

“You should have both consulted an attorney before you signed anything with anyone’s name on it that wasn’t your own,” he told Kurt, in the same even tone he might have used to explain a parking ordinance.