Verification of Pleadings, Notary Error, and the Presumption of Appropriate Performance

   It is crucial to properly verify juvenile petitions and motions seeking to terminate parental rights. If any one should doubt this admonition, they need only reference the decisions of the North Carolina Carolina Supreme Court in recent years which have repeatedly tied subject matter jurisdiction to this ministerial act. Take for instance the Court's 2006 decision in In re T.R.P, 360 N.C. 588,
636 S.E.2d 787 (2006)), where the Court was confronted with a juvenile petition that was "notarized, but was neither signed nor verified by the Director . . . or any authorized
representative thereof. Id. at 589, 636 S.E.2d at 789. Noting not just the importance of the verification process to confer proper jurisdictional authority upon a trial court, the Court also emphasized that verification had a safekeeping function where the General Assembly ensured through the verification requirement  “that our courts exercise their power only when an identifiable government actor ‘vouches’ for the validity of the allegations." Id. at 592, 791.
    Fast forward eight years later and the issue still carries the same potency-where a petition is not verified, the Court still maintains the petition to be void ab ititio. But what if the petition was verified but there were defects with the verification process?  In its March 2016 opinion in the Matter of N.T
_N.C.__,__S.E.2d (March 18, 2016), the Court was confronted this very problem. Unlike the scenario in T.R.P., an official had verified a signed petition but the signature of the verifying official was illegible and lacked any indication of the officials title. The Court of Appeals had determined that these defects deprived the trial court from obtaining subject matter jurisdiction. In re N.T., __N.C. App.__, 769 S.E.2d 658 (2015). Not the case, announced the higher court. In its decision reversing the Court of Appeals,  the Supreme Court distinguished T.R.P. from the facts of N.T.: it wasn't that verification didn't occur but rather there was a challenge to the authority of the verifying official to perform the act of verification. As such, the Court made it clear that “[g]enerally there is a presumption that a public official in the performance of an official duty acts in accordance with the law and the authority conferred upon him." Moreover, the Court continued, " [t]he burden is upon the contesting party to overcome this presumption.” In re N.T., at ___ citing State v. Watts, 289 N.C. 445, 449, 222 S.E.2d 389, 391 (1976) (citations omitted).
      While subject matter continues to be absent where unverified petitions or motions that are filed with the trial court, it seems that the Supreme Court intends to narrowly focus its holding on the subject to facts that actually suggest that the verification process did not occur. Where there are defects with the process itself (i.e. illegible signature, boxes not checked, expiration of notary commission not present), the official acts of a verifying official are subject to a presumption of administrative appropriateness. Unless this presumption is overcome, the act stands, is presumed appropriate, and subject matter jurisdiction will be found to have accrued to the trial court.

 

.