(The Center Square) – A sitting DeKalb County judge filed a will naming herself executor of her late brother’s estate – and a forensic document examiner hired by a family member says the signatures on that will are not the dead man’s.
The dispute has triggered a probate court challenge, a complaint to the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission, and recusal orders that removed every DeKalb County probate and superior court judge from the case because the person who filed the will holds a judicial seat in the county.
Rhathelia Stroud serves as both a DeKalb County Magistrate Court judge and chief judge of the Decatur Municipal Court. She did not return phone messages from The Center Square left at her Magistrate Court office and on her personal phone, nor did she answer messages to her county and personal emails. Her attorney in the probate case, Dana Ashford of Decatur, also did not return messages left with her office by phone and email.
The judge’s niece, Gemina Stroud, filed a formal challenge in Probate Court in November alleging “forgery” and asking a judge to declare the will invalid.
“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.”
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.
“It is my professional expert opinion,” Hale wrote in her December report, “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 her attorney, has called her niece’s allegations “unsupported” and “factually and legally deficient,” according to correspondence in the case provided to The Center Square.
And a complaint Gemina Stroud filed against her aunt with the state’s judicial watchdog has already been dismissed. The Judicial Qualifications Commission, which investigates allegations against judges at all levels of the court system and can recommend sanctions by the state Supreme Court, declined to take up the matter, according to correspondence also provided by the niece. The JQC’s investigative panel said she had not provided “evidence sufficient to substantiate a violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct.”
The commission declined reconsideration and would not discuss the case with The Center Square, citing state law making complaints confidential.
Johnny Stroud’s will
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, according to his children. He was 68.
The Last Will and Testament that Judge Stroud filed in DeKalb County Probate Court is dated Sept. 5, 2025 — 12 days before his death.
The will says Stroud was “of sound and disposing mind and memory and not acting under duress, menace, fraud or undue influence.” It gives his sister authority to sell his home near Stone Mountain – valued at $244,000 by the county – and use proceeds to compensate herself for assisting him during his illness. Also from the sale, his other sister and an aunt receive $5,000, his best friend and a cousin get $2,500, and the remainder is to be divided equally between his children “as determined by my Executrix,” the filed will says.
It leaves nothing else to his two adult children, other than asking his two sisters to share his personal belongings with them “at their discretion.”
The challenge to the will filed in Probate Court says that on the day it’s dated, Johnny Stroud “lacked the physical ability and functional capacity to sign his name, hold a pen, or knowingly execute legal documents of any kind.”
“At the time, my dad, he was weak,” his son, Jarquez Stroud, told The Center Square. “He couldn’t sign nothing. He couldn’t even hold a cup and drink broth out of it.”
Jarquez, who said he has lived in his father’s Stone Mountain home most of his life, said he is concerned about losing the house if the will stands and the property is sold.
“You’d be surprised how people do you when folks pass away,” he said.
The will is also signed by two witnesses, and the attached affidavit is signed and stamped by a notary public authorized by the state to verify the identity of document signers.
The notary did not return messages from The Center Square.
‘Major differences’
The Center Square asked Hale, the forensic document examiner, if the differences between the signatures on the will and Johnny Stroud’s older signatures could be explained by his poor health at the time.
Hale said that could be, except that the two signatures on the will and the attached affidavit have dissimilarities too, such as differences in the letters S and D, which indicate someone trying to mimic Johnny Stroud’s signature.
“Even comparing the two questioned signatures to each other, there are some differences,” Hale said. “Major differences.”
Her report said she used a methodology used by the FBI, U.S. Treasury and U.S. Postal Service. She compared the signatures on the will to Johnny Stroud’s signature on a 2023 warranty deed, a 2023 burial authorization, a 2015 loan document, and a 2002 driver’s license, among other records provided by his daughter. Hale said it was important to see how the man signed legal documents.
“Based on the evidence before me, it’s a very high degree of certainty” that someone else signed the will, Hale told The Center Square.
She said the presence of witnesses and a notary stamp did not factor into her analysis, which is limited to the physical evidence of the signatures.
Her forensic report has not been filed in Probate Court. No formal response to the forgery allegations has been filed by Judge Stroud.
Though Stroud declined to speak for this story, her attorney responded to a demand letter from her niece’s attorney in March, calling the allegations “serious and unsupported,” according to a copy provided to The Center Square by Gemina Stroud.
The judge’s lawyer in the case, Ashford, said the two witnesses will testify they saw Johnny Stroud “willingly execute his Will on September 5, 2025, and that he appeared to be of sound mind at the time.” Judge Stroud’s “sole objective is to honor the final testamentary wishes of her brother, the Decedent, as expressed in his validly executed Will,” the letter said.
The letter also warned the niece about contacting the media and speaking to potential witnesses in the case. Gemina said that’s a reference to her encounter at a Kroger store with her father’s best friend, who now has his pickup truck. She said she told him he’d been improperly given the truck.
The niece’s challenge
Gemina Stroud’s court challenge also alleges the will’s witnesses are “close personal friends or long-standing acquaintances” of Judge Stroud and were not impartial.
In her request for reconsideration to the Judicial Qualifications Commission, she noted that Judge Stroud, as a practicing attorney, once represented the notary public in a 1998 bankruptcy filing — a connection The Center Square confirmed through records of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Northern District of Georgia
All DeKalb County probate and superior court judges have been disqualified from hearing the matter because Judge Stroud holds a judicial appointment in the county. DeKalb County Superior Court Chief Judge Shondeana Morris has asked the neighboring Atlanta Judicial Circuit to assign a replacement judge.
As a DeKalb County Magistrate Court judge — appointed by the county’s chief magistrate — Judge Stroud presides over Misdemeanor Mental Health Court, a diversion program for low-level offenders.
As Decatur Municipal Court chief judge — appointed by the city commission — she presides over traffic offenses, parking tickets, local ordinance violations, and misdemeanors.
