>>The gist was, telling me that the documents are forgery is hearsay unless you witnessed the forgery or are an expert.<<
Not if you were the purported author of the documents and you testified that you didn’t author them.
I’m not sure where you’re trying to go with this. There are rules for admission of documents, and in general, government documents are admitted without “proving” them up. If there is a question about their authenticity, no it does not take an expert to prove that — all kinds of fact witnesses can testify to that.
For example, the following hypothetical individuals can say:
— “I have seen the original document and it is different...”
— “I am the custodian of those records and this is not part of that...”
— Another person can testify that the entire set of records are not authentic for whatever reason
I’m sure there are other scenarios.
I concede your points, there are varied ways hearsay is admissible, death bed confessions are generally considered, but some of the examples you have given are not hearsay because they are direct testimony and not a repeat of what somebody else had said, or a layman's opinion.