My attorney went completely still when she saw the signature. Then she asked me to look at the date again. The loan had been taken out in 2011, but the business records showed the equipment had been refinanced twice since then — each time using the original guarantor information. My name wasn’t on the business, but my signature was apparently still attached to its debts.
I told her I had never been told about the refinancing. She turned the page and pointed to a line I had completely missed: “Spouse consent obtained.” There was a date beside it from 2018, and underneath was a signature that looked almost exactly like mine — except I knew I hadn’t signed anything that year.
She asked if I still had any old documents from that period. I went home and searched through a box in the garage. At the bottom was a folder I’d forgotten about, and inside it was the original 2011 loan application — with my real signature. My attorney compared the two signatures for less than a minute before saying, “This changes everything.”
