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In a case decided by the Appellate Division on April 3, 2013, Estevez v. Mangiliman, Docket No. A-2097-11T3 (not approved for publication), F&M successfully represented a client whose title was under attack because the deed of conveyance had been forged.  The Court, while acknowledging that the equities asserted by an innocent purchaser are normally irrelevant when a deed is a nullity, held that such equities are relevant when the otherwise void deed has been ratified.  The Court found that the claimant, whose ex-husband had forged her signature on the deed to the marital property, had learned of the forgery and the resulting sale a year and a half later, but did not file her complaint to quiet title until some five years later.  In the interim, the grantee had mortgaged the property and had been making loan and tax payments.  Claimant, for her part, had gone through a divorce proceeding wherein she asserted, in court filings, her satisfaction with the division of marital property.  The Court found that the claimant’s conduct not only amounted to ratification, but also met the standards for the application of judicial estoppel.  Absent the application of these equitable doctrines, the innocent purchaser would have been left without a home, but still liable on the debt secured by the mortgage and without any realistic means of recovering from the wrongdoer, plaintiff’s ex-husband, who had apparently disappeared.