I admit I'm a little sensitive to this issue because my name is routinely botched on documents. My full name is "Kimberley" with the African spelling, and more often than not the extra "e" is missed. Who wants to correct and initial name spellings on an inch-thick loan package? Not me. I always make them reprint the documents until they get it right—especially after having given a heads up about the unusual spelling, which I always do.
In one of the cases I ran across this week, my client confided he had paid an attorney more than $20,000 to handle a situation for him five years ago. Our signing appointment involved a deed that had not been recorded properly by the attorney's office, caught now only because my client was refinancing his home. Not wanting to waste time on an unbillable task, the attorney's office merely provided my client with a clean copy of the document taken from five-year old files. One of the signer's names had since changed, and the notarial language in California changed in 2008.
In another case, my elderly client needed to execute a power of attorney document. Not only was her name misspelled, but so was one of her children's names. The notarial language was wrong as well, even though someone took the time to cut and paste two acknowledgments into the document.
Contrast this with a trust document signing I did last week for an attorney in Pasadena, who not only spelled my name correctly, but included it in the notarial language of the document just minutes after I handed him my business card. All I had to do was sign and stamp. I was astounded!
It just seems to me that when creating legal documents in the computer age, most tasks should involve pulling up a template and filling in a few blanks. At the very least, a client paying for legal services has a right to expect his or her name to be spelled properly in a legal document. No one likes to make hand written revisions and initial them, but the underlying issue is much more troubling. If someone can't make a serious effort to spell the principal's name correctly or even consistently throughout a document, what else might be wrong with it?
When I encounter a name mispelling on a legal document, I attach a California all-purpose acknowledgment or jurat form, rather than take a chance on a missed word or comma in the preparer's notarial language. Attention to detail should be what it's all about.
