Divorce is a life experience that can reshape everything—your routines, your relationships, your sense of identity. Even when it’s the right decision, it is still deeply hard.  This emotional life event can often spill into a habit many of us already have- using social media. Logging on to your social media and viewing, liking, sharing or commenting on posts can have consequences especially during a divorce.  Your digital footprint can impact possession schedule, child support and even property division.

How can my own social media be used against me?

While navigating a divorce or other litigation, your social media becomes more than just a place to vent your feelings, it becomes a key location to create evidence. The court views your social media behavior as real life evidence, not just “venting”.  Often your photos, instant messages, likes, status updates and comments can find their way into evidence in a court room.

• Your posts can create a timeline including time stamps for the creation of new relationships, spending habits, and other behaviors.

• Posting negative comments about your ex online can amplify an already hostile relationship. It might feel good in the moment to vent about an ex online, but it could come back to haunt you, especially in a custody matter. Expressing negative comments about your ex can also encourage others like friends or family members to pile on, creating drama that can make matters worse.

• Sharing details of new partners online can lead to questions about finances, judgment and priorities and even impact possession orders.

• Posts showing photos and videos or partying can be used to challenge your character and priorities. Sharing posts about your behaviors can produce evidence that can be used to impact custody decisions.

• Emotional posts can create evidence that can be used to frame mental health concerns, substance abuse and other safety concerns. Even if your feelings are valid, sharing online can show hostility, suggest poor judgment and underline your credibility.

• Private does not mean posts are protected. Friends or family can screenshot posts and share with others.

• Posting content about your litigation online can also lead to increased legal fees. Online behavior can attract attention that your legal team may need to monitor, and this could cause longer legal battles.

• Children are tech savvy, posting online could lead to your children reading your negative comments about their own parent.

• Emoji’s count too… increasingly courts have accepted the commonly accepted meanings of emoji and hashtags as evidence.

These are only a short list of some of the issues that can arise from sharing details about your life online during a divorce. Because online content is difficult to erase completely, before you share something online during litigation, pause and consider “Would I be ok with a judge reading this”. Although this is one of the most difficult times in life to navigate, try to lean on trusted friends or professionals for help rather than posting your feelings publicly.  And remember when in doubt, post less.

Written By: Krissy Cooley