By Jedidiah McKeehan

I remember reading an article a number of years ago regarding the divorce between the couple that owned the Los Angeles Dodgers and how messy the divorce was. The article referenced that an expert had been hired to determine whether the stapling of some agreement was the original stapling or that the documents had been tampered with. A staple expert. Who knew such a person existed?

Most legal arguments do not get quite to that extreme, but one concern is determining whether a document needed for some legal purpose (a will, a deed, a court order) contains the original signatures of people and/or their attorneys.

The easiest way to do that is to obtain signatures in blue ink. Some courts go so far as to only accept documents signed in blue ink and reject any that contain black ink because they do not want to have to go down the road of trying to determine whether something contains an original signature.

Because of that, most attorneys shun black pens at all costs and carry only pens having blue ink with them. If you have some important documents that need signing, it may not be a bad idea to take a few seconds and track down a blue pen for signing instead of picking up whatever pen happens to be most available.

Jedidiah McKeehan is an attorney practicing in Knox County and surrounding counties.  He works in many areas, including family law, criminal, and personal injury. Visit attorney-knoxville.com for more information about this legal issue and other legal issues.