Family Court Treads Deeper into Parental and Spousal Use of Social Media Websites and Dating Websites
Husband and Wife are divorcing. They have a Child.
They are using social media websites. And dating websites.
In the old days of social media, like last year, used to be your worst nightmare was your ex stumbling upon your indiscreet post that could hurt your divorce or child custody or child support or alimony case. That was then.
Now is now.
Husband happens to find some material online that he believes calls Wife’s parenting into question. Which spurs him to seek more of the same, from the presiding family court.
And the Connecticut family court obliges … and ups the “game”. Exponentially.
Specifically, the divorce court orders both divorcing spouses to submit to the family court – and to each other – all of their respective user ids and passwords on all social media websites they use and all of the dating websites that they use.
Meaning that, if it’s out there, it will surely be found.
Which may be why the Wife allegedly asks a friend to clean up after her and delete anything damaging left in her wake.
Only that backfires on the Wife … because the family court then enters an order enjoining or prohibiting either spouse from deleting any of their material from social media websites or dating websites.
Champions of individual privacy rights are sounding an alarm over this arguable invasion of both spouses’ privacy.
Interestingly though, the family court ruling reportedly violates the privacy policies and terms of use of several of the social media websites and dating websites involved.
This could potentially open up a can of worms. That could potentially result in consequences running the gamut from the websites in question closing both spouses’ respective accounts and banning them … to the websites in question formally intervening in the family court case to protect their users’ privacy rights and enforce their own privacy policies and terms of use.
One thing is for sure. We haven’t heard the last of these divorce court rulings.
Stay tuned …
Read more in this [Providence, RI / New Bedford, MA] NBC TV 10 news article: Divorcing couple ordered to provide Facebook passwords and this New York Daily News article: Divorcing couple ordered to hand over Facebook passwords
