I imagine it would be fairly hard to flawlessly forge a split document even today, at least if you used paper with long fibers and the edges were intact. Even i

I imagine it would be fairly hard to flawlessly forge a split document even today, at least if you used paper with long fibers and the edges were intact. Even if you match the cut perfectly, I'd bet that under a microscope you could tell that cut fibers on the two halves don't match. A remarkably solid approach considering the simplicity. The split tally is similarly elegant. Of course, just giving a notary a copy works almost as well.