81% of their members have dealt with divorces citing social networks as evidence. Time stamps from MMOs and Facebook status updates are fuel.
”Oh, I’ve had some fun ones,” said Linda Lea Viken, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, a 1,600 member organization, reports USA Today. ”It’s very, very common in my new cases.” 66% of lawyers surveyed pointed to Facebook as ‘King’.
It’s a hot bed of evidence for indiscretion they say, followed by 15% for MySpace and 5% for Twitter. Beware social networker… because the Internet has a good memory.
”This sort of evidence has gone from nothing to a large percentage of my cases coming in, and it’s pretty darn easy,” added Viken. ”It’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
Here are some examples from USA Today:
• Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children.
• Father seeks custody of the kids, claiming (among other things) that his ex-wife never attends the events of their young ones. Subpoenaed evidence from the gaming site World of Warcraft tracks her there with her boyfriend at the precise time she was supposed to be out with the children. Mom loves Facebook’s Farmville, too, at all the wrong times.
• Mom denies in court that she smokes marijuana but posts partying, pot-smoking photos of herself on Facebook.
”You’re finding information that you just never get in the normal discovery process — ever,” Leslie Matthews said, an attorney from Denver, Colorado.
”People are just blabbing things all over Facebook. People don’t yet quite connect what they’re saying in their divorce cases is completely different from what they’re saying on Facebook. It doesn’t even occur to them that they’d be found out.”
Think before you twitter you twit! Have you ever updated a social network with something you’ve come to regret a little later? Has Facebook bitten you in the rear-end?
Source: Eurogamer