Two changes have resulted from technology and human behavior related to the technology. In the past, if one spouse wished to check up on their husband or wife, they would have had to hire a private investigator or engage in the tedious and time-consuming activity themselves.
Today, most people in St. Louis carry on them a device that in many cases can provide a minute by minute record of their day and their movements. Your cellphone likely can produce a full record of all of your activities and in many cases photos, texts, physical locations and all of the apps you have used or websites you have visited.
This device, by nature of its being your constant companion, is your gateway to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Those sites and dozens of others allow you to share your life and participate in the lives of others.
The question you have to ask yourself is this: do you really want to do that during a divorce? The danger is that you can provide evidence to your spouse that can be used against you in many potential aspects of the divorce and you may not realize that you have posted or texted something incriminating until it shows up on the screen in a court hearing.
Some divorce attorneys advise their clients to completely abstain from the use of social media during a divorce. That may be possible for some, but it may be unrealistic for others. Nonetheless, if you don’t abstain, you should think about every picture, every post and every text and how it would look in a courtroom with the judge reading it?
Because once something is “out there,” there is no bringing it back. Maybe abstaining might be possible after all?
Source: huffingtonpost.com, “Social Media + Divorce = Danger Ahead!” By Deanna Conklin-Danao, Psy.D. for Divorce Magazine, April 14, 2016
