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If a landlord signs my name on a lease that I never got is that forgery?
<p>I rented a room from a lady. She moved out. I contacted the landlord. He said I could rent the place. He said he was out of town and that he needed to get with me to sign a lease.
7 months later still no lease or rental agreement, nothing.
After him not making repairs and trying to raise my rent he evicted me. Today in court he produced a lease that he forged my signature on. I had never seen the guy before today. I never met with him, never signed anything.
Can I get him for forgery?</p>

<p>For the sake of clarity, I assume you also did not authorized him to sign the lease on your behalf.
In the US, forgery is a crime in all states. You cannot &quot;get&quot; the landlord for this crime, since that is the prerogative of the prosecutor. However, if you suffered financial damage resulting from forgery, you can sue him to recover your loss.</p>
<p>Another sense of &quot;getting&quot; the landlord would be to thwart his legal argument. To evict you, he would have to show that you violated the terms of the lease, so having something that you supposedly agreed to would be important. Without any such document, there is just your word vs. his word as to the terms of the lease (such as a purported &quot;no pets&quot; clause). If you can prove that the written document is not valid, that puts you in the realm of oral agreements, and who seems to be more believable.</p>
