During a divorce, is Facebook something the average person can research effectively?
Jimmie: The average layperson is very astute, and if they already have a Facebook account and they’re putting status updates on their Facebook they also know how to search Facebook, and they also know how to check timelines, and they also know how to check photographs of people’s friends and who’s connected to who, which is another thing. A spouse can find that there’s a friend listed, they have a Facebook friend, and then the spouse can then click on the Facebook friend’s name and then find out who that person is and find out who all their friends are, and just by association sometimes people are guilty or put in a group just based on who they’re associating with or who their friends are associating with.
How about say, Twitter? Is it a similar situation?
Jimmie: Twitter, again, if the spouse knows the other spouse’s Twitter handle they can go in there and they can search to see all the postings that were made by that spouse. One of the things that couples are doing, especially if they’re about to get divorced or they think that their marriage is not as solid as they once thought, a lot of couples have been putting spyware on their spouse’s cell phones and also on their computers, so they’re capturing chat conversations, instant messaging, websites that are being visited, keywords that are being searched in Google or any of the other search engines. So, like I said, people are becoming their own detectives, and they’re doing a pretty good job at it.
James Lawrence Knox is a partner at Milligan, Beswick, Levine & Knox, LLP. For almost three decades, Mr. Knox has been providing aggressive legal representation to clients facing criminal charges, as well as individuals involved in family law issues or facing administrative law proceedings. Mr. Knox, along with the other members of our legal team, is firmly committed to putting the needs of clients first and has a long and distinguished track record to show that he is a skillful litigator and knowledgeable legal professional.