How social media affect divorces

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These days, most people with tablets and smartphones spend a great deal of time scrolling through their online profiles. Liking cute pictures, sharing posts, and communicating with each other online is a routine part of an average person’s life. Moreover, some users even use their accounts to let their hair down or ask for advice.

When going through a breakup, be it a cheap divorce online or a contested case, our online activity can become ample evidence that spouses’ lawyers can use against their opponents to affect spousal and child support, child custody, division of property, etc. Take note that your partner’s attorney will surely look for anything on the Internet that can make you look like a bad husband/wife and toxic parent. Therefore, sharing inappropriate content about your ex to be on social media is tantamount to cutting your nose despite your face. Consider the following to learn how social media can affect your case:

 Email and Social Media Correspondence

Keep in mind that your every text message or comment will be considered by a judge and may even be brought into the proceedings. Let us say, if you use your online profile to reveal something about your raise or boast of an expensive buy you have recently made, this can serve as evidence and can be used to accuse you in being dishonest in your financial declaration that you have attached to your divorce packet.

Just imagine a situation when people claim that they work for peanuts, yet they tell their friends about their expensive property or discuss their plans for the next world tour through texting. With this evidence, their request for spousal support will be unquestionably denied, for a reason.

It is highly recommended to avoid sharing any info before and during a divorce. If there is something you don’t what a judge to know about, simply don’t bring it up for a discussion anywhere.   

Finances

Of course, people don’t talk directly about their monthly income on social media; however, there are many other ways in which they prefer to boast of their deep pockets. When someone hides assets to avoid paying spousal and child support but posts pictures from expensive restaurants, this will be necessarily taken into account by a judge.

Even if you block your ex to be from accessing your profile, there are also friends that you two share and who can reach your spouse immediately. If you are going to have a world tour with someone and that someone posts about this journey, your spouse can easily learn about these plans and use this information to prove your dishonesty regarding your financial shape.

Those using LinkedIn profiles often use this platform to present their side businesses. This information can be used by their partners during a breakup to get more child maintenance than they would get without mentioning these additional sources of income. 

Dating Websites

Think twice before you decide to land one of the many dating platforms, especially if your divorce hasn’t been completed yet. Not only will you seem like cheating on your spouse, but also probably provide an idealized characteristic of yourself that doesn’t correspond to reality. If you are caught saying something different on such a platform than is said to a judge, you are going to face lots of problems in court.

Child Custody

By reviewing someone’s profile, one can say what this person is doing, where he or she is going, and what people he or she is meeting. When a mom is dealing with a child custody case, yet she posts pictures of her being drunk instead of watching her kids, a court will probably rule that the kids will not be safe with her. The same we can say about a father who is supposed to look for a job but, instead, he plays video games all day long and says about this on the Net. In this case, the court will probably rule severely on spousal and child support issues.

Preventing the Negative Impact of Social Media

To avoid any effect of social media that can ruin your divorce case is to simply watch your online behavior and limit your activity on the Net. It also makes sense to stop using your online profiles at all. However, don’t hurry to delete your accounts to get rid of your online life. As soon as litigation starts, your profiles and your spouse’s ones become evidence. Getting rid of them may be understood as the destruction of evidence and thus can lead to many unwanted consequences.

The only thing you can be sure of is that your ex to be and his or her attorney are poking around your online presence. Therefore, try to protect your interests by watching your online behavior at least until the case is finalized.

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