Many Illinois residents use Facebook and other social media sites as a way to communicate with others while providing a record of their daily lives. However, because it can be difficult to keep some of the information that may be shared private, the discovery of this information can result in marital breakdowns. Divorces that occur due to social media or networking sites are referred to as ” Facebook divorces.”
Marital breakdowns can occur due to the information that may be found on Facebook, even if one or both parties attempt to keep their information private. In many cases, the privacy settings are not reliable. In other cases, many people do not realize that their online interactions could carry over to the real world; what may be considered innocent by one person may not be considered innocent by another. Condemning evidence can be incredibly easy to find, and anything that is deleted can be later retrieved from Facebook’s database by forensic experts.
If evidence is discovered by the other party’s attorney, it can be used in divorce or custody cases. Infidelity may be inferred based on messages and pictures, while discussing the status of a court case could be detrimental depending on what was revealed.
A family law attorney has the ability to potentially assist a party with discovering evidence that could provide them with the grounds for a divorce or add fuel to negotiations. For example, if a person is seeking child support but the other party claims that they do not have a job, an attorney may discover that the other party is lying based on statuses and photographs that they posted that demonstrate that they have some form of income. This information may allow the person seeking child support to obtain a formal order.
