One thing few couples consider when beginning a divorce is the impact that technology will have on their proceedings.This is especially true in heavily contested cases. Your attorney is not allowed to tell you to go out and purge your various social network platforms, nor should you. It would be prudent, however, to be careful with social media and other technologies, and to use common sense. Often parties will post a picture or a status update in order to elicit a response from a spouse. However, is the status update airing your spouse’s dirty laundry or that photograph of you and the new significant other on vacation together something you want your spouse’s attorney holding up in front of the judge in your case? Besides social media postings, the following are things to consider when going through a contested divorce.
Be Careful With Your Passwords
If your password for your personal accounts are something your spouse knows, you may want to change them. These could be for anything from email to banking/retirement accounts. Account balances and information are shared during the discovery phase in a divorce, but there have been instances when one party guesses an account password, quickly liquidates the account and either makes a purchase, pays off a personal debt, or money simply vanishes. While there are legal processes to try and recover and offset these actions, they can be very costly and time consuming once the damage has been done. As for email passwords, you may think that you have nothing to hide. However, it is easy for a spouse to gain personal and confidential information by simply monitoring your correspondences, especially if you communicate with your attorney via email. While this type of monitoring behavior does take place, it is both improper and unethical. Any attorney who becomes aware of this behavior should advise their client to immediately cease monitoring their spouse’s communications.
Additionally, even if you think your passwords are secure, be sure they are not set to ‘auto login’ on any sites or computers your spouse may have access to.
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