Ex wife changed daughters name

It took me 17 years to find my daughter and my ex wife had her name changed to her husbands at the time, this was 17 years ago. She claims that she mailed me paper work and I signed it and had it noterized. I know this not to be true, I spent the last 15 years looking for her, what I need to know is can someone sign there rights away thru the mail. Im 100% disabled now so I do have some memory loss but I wouldn’t have spent 15 years looking for a child I gave away… shouldn’t something like signing your rights away go thru a judge or a lawyer and signed in front of a lawyer or judge?

You cannot “sign over” parental rights in an agreement alone. There would have needed to be an action filed for “Termination of Parental Rights” and a judge will have to approve this. It’s best to also use an attorney to do this. I agree with you that this doesn’t sound right. You wouldn’t have been able to just do something like this through the mail.