Social media and divorce

When divorcing, social media may be the last thing on your mind, but we’re seeing it feature in more and more of the divorce cases we handle for our Cheltenham clients.

Here are some key points to consider:

Change your passwords

You may have shared various passwords with your spouse. If your marriage is coming to an end, change your passwords to avoid sensitive information or confidential legal advice falling into the wrong hands. Failing to do so could give your spouse an unfair advantage.

Don’t access your spouse’s personal emails without their permission

As tempting as it may be to browse through your spouse’s emails, if you obtain access by unlawful means, you may not be able to rely on this information within court proceedings, and at worse could find yourself involved in criminal proceedings. Return any information that could be considered private and delete any soft copies, to avoid accusations of unlawful self-discovery.

If you do obtain relevant information outside the normal disclosure process, if approached correctly, there are ways of ensuring the information can be relied upon within proceedings legitimately, and this is something we can help you with.

Check whether your devices are synced

Consider that your personal text messages or emails from a mobile phone may be synced to a family computer or tablet and therefore can be easily read by other people. Devices may even share your location, and having separated, you may not want your ex partner to be able to track your whereabouts. Make sure you keep private messages or photos private.

If you want to talk about the impact of social media on divorce, contact one of our Cheltenham solicitors today.

Found this article helpful? You may be interested to read our article on Defamation on social media – when all publicity is NOT good publicity.