Forged Checks From a Trust Fund

My lady friend who is divorced discovered that her ex while they had been married, forged her name on some E-Trade account checks where she was the ONLY custodian of the two children from the marriage....and these two e-trade accounts. She discovered this early in 2006.

The father had written checks in the amount of $11k from the oldest daughters account, and a little over $2k from the younger one. During a collabortave law process they kept re-payment of these funds to the children out of the separation agreement. (Her lawyers advice at the time). With the Divorce final, she's approached the ex about reconsidering repayment. his reaction is that they had talked about taking these funds for tax payments, braces, summer camp, and down payments on family vechicles. My friend states while they had talked baout using these funds from time to time, they never agreed to use them, as they had their own E-Trade funds in which to get extra needed capital.

So we have a he said she said sitution, but the botom line this guy went out behind the family's back and sold stock and cashed this large amount out. She caught him finally as he bought the girls a dog...as she was going through separation of assets...she finally looked at their E-Trade accounts and found gobs of money missing. The dates and amount for when the dog was purchased matched when stocks were solkd and cash was cut. He even admitted thsi and did repay about $300.

So the questions. Does forgery and this amount of money require a criminal law proceeding, or can something like this be handled in court.

She has copies of all the canceled checks, and of course could get a hand writing expert to look at the signatures on the checks to try and determine if she worte them or not....but the next question is...she truly wants to only get a judgement where the father has to pay his kids back, not send him to jail. If she were to proceed does a crime of this nature and magnitude usually end up with that kind of penalty?

This forging of checks has been going on as she investigated this situation for close to 10 years. Is their a statute of limitation on a crime of this magnitude?

You can pursue it criminally and civilly and it often pays to use both to make sure the forgery is exposed and the culprit is brought to justice...