An allegedly “forged” signature on a will has triggered a court fight in Georgia that already includes a challenge in probate court, a complaint to the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission and recusal orders that removed every probate and superior court judge from the case in DeKalb County.
It’s because while Rhathelia Stroud, both a DeKalb County magistrate court judge and chief of the Decatur Municipal Court, filed a will naming herself as executor of her late brother’s estate, a forensic expert hired by the family confirmed the signature is not that of the dead man.
A report at the Center Square revealed the judge’s niece, Gemina Stroud, challenged the will charging her father’s signature was forged.
“That’s not my dad’s signature,” she told The Center Square. “I know my dad’s signature very well, and I have copies of his signature. They just don’t match. Even the two signatures on (the will) are very different from one another.”
Neither the judge nor her lawyer returned calls left by the publication.
“The niece retained forensic document examiner Patricia Hale, based in McDonald, Ohio, at a cost of $800. Hale has given expert testimony in cases throughout the country and last year led a judge to invalidate a will as a forgery in a Jessamine County, Kentucky, case,” the report explained.
“It is my professional expert opinion,” Hale said, “that a different person or persons authored the name of Johnny Stroud on the questioned document. Someone did indeed forge the signatures of Johnny Stroud on the questioned document.”
The judge, through legal counsel, claimed that the allegations are “unsupported” and “factually and legally deficient,” the report said.
Johnny “Pokey” Stroud, an Army veteran and retired bus driver, died of colon cancer in his sister’s home in Decatur, where he had been living in hospice care after being discharged from Atlanta’s VA hospital in late August, the report explained.
The will Judge Stroud filed in DeKalb County Probate Court is dated Sept. 5, 2025 — 12 days before his death.
In it he “gives” his sister authority to sell his home, valued at $244,000, and use the proceeds to compensate herself.
The legal challenge to the filing charges that on the date it was “signed,” Johnny Stroud “lacked the physical ability and functional capacity to sign his name, hold a pen, or knowingly execute legal documents of any kind.”
The will is signed by two witnesses, and an affidavit is stamped by a notary, but that person did not respond to messages from the publication.
Hale concluded that ill health could cause a change in signatures, but also noted that the two signatures on the will and affidavit also have differences.
Hale said there’s a “very high degree of certainty” that someone else signed the will.
The challenge, which the commission already has discounted, said the witnesses were close friends of the judge, and so were not impartial. Further, the judge, as a lawyer, once represented the notary in the case.
