If you are active on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, you’ve probably seen your friends and/or followers share intimate aspects of their lives. You might have done the same.
While social media can be a great platform for meeting new friends or interacting with family and friends, it helps to understand that your social media activity does matter when you are dealing with a legal matter like a divorce.
Your social media posts can find their way into the divorce court
When the divorce is acrimonious, it is not uncommon for each party to want to gain the upper hand. And this may motivate your spouse to look all over for anything they can use against you – including your social media posts. After all, anything you post on social media becomes a matter of public record and is, thus, admissible in court.
Sometimes, your spouse may petition the court to subpoena your social media account. If this happens, the court might access your private messages as well.
Ways your social media activity can impact your divorce
In the eyes of the law, your social media posts are basically your words. As such, if you make posts venting about your spouse or portraying them in a bad light, the court might find you guilty of parental alienation. Your spouse may argue, and rightfully so, that you are incapable of maintaining a healthy post-divorce co-parenting relationship. And this can hurt your child custody case.
If you post photos of yourself on shopping sprees, lavish vacations or extravagant purchases, your spouse might suspect that you are attempting to deplete marital property to avoid a fair settlement per Virginia equitable distribution statute.
Divorce is stressful, make no mistake. As such, it is not uncommon to want all the support you can get. However, taking to social media to vent or talk about your divorce is never a prudent idea. It’s also important to have legal guidance behind you at each step of the process.
