Woman Finds Out Her Husband Is a Bigamist ... Via Facebook

CLEVELAND -- She knew her husband took a lot of business trips. Now she knows why.


"Megan" said she didn't suspect her husband of another marriage until the evidence was on her computer screen.

Her relatives pointed her to the other woman's Facebook page where Megan discovered multiple photos of her husband and the woman together.

A few weeks later, dozens of wedding photos also showed up on Facebook showing Megan's husband and his new bride.

"It's rubbing that salt into the wound of already finding out that my husband's having an affair," Megan said. "The pictures are out there for the world to see. It's not just that I have the knowledge, but I see the proof and everyone I know sees the proof and people I don't know see the proof."

Megan's wedding took place in Italy in 2005, and by 2008, the couple had two children and a home in a Cleveland suburb. As a businessman with his own plane, Megan's husband traveled a lot around the country and across the world.

Megan said she first became suspicious when her husband claimed to have been in China and even brought back gifts for the kids yet his passport had been at home the entire time.

To eventually learn on Facebook that her husband not only had another lover but now a second wife was devastating, Megan said.

"If they're going to have the affair, they're going to have the affair," she said. "But it's extra. It adds impact to the hurt, when they're posting the things they post about the affair. Pictures of the vacations they're taking with the other, the lover, the extra person. (Facebook posts) just cause a whole new hurt."

Common mistakes

Divorce attorneys are finding a staggering increase in evidence gathered through social media, according to CNN.

Andrew Zashin, a family law expert from Cleveland, said the artificial "celebrity" status that Facebook creates often clouds people's judgment of how those posts and others will come back to hurt them in court.

"If someone's having an illicit relationship, they don't know what the other side of that relationship is broadcasting to the world on Facebook," Zashin said. "Often times we'll see a man or woman denying an affair or a relationship. All of sudden, things start to unravel, not because they did something but because the other part of this illicit relationship did something (using social media)."

Body of Evidence

An attorney for Megan's husband told WTSP in Tampa, Florida that he doesn't believe he needs a divorce because he learned after the fact that the marriage paperwork was never filed correctly in Italy and therefor they were never married.

Megan claims everything with the marriage was done "by the book" and that a prenuptial agreement was signed. She plans to use pictures, posts, and other information from Facebook in her eventual divorce hearing.


© 2010 WKYC-TV

Divorce Lawyers LOVE Facebook

Forgot to de-friend your wife on Facebook while posting vacation shots of your mistress? Her divorce lawyer will be thrilled.

Oversharing on social networks has led to an overabundance of evidence in divorce cases. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers says 81 percent of its members have used or faced evidence plucked from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, including YouTube and LinkedIn, over the last five years.

"Oh, I've had some fun ones," said Linda Lea Viken, president-elect of the 1,600-member group. "It's very, very common in my new cases."

Facebook is the unrivaled leader for turning virtual reality into real-life divorce drama, Viken said. Sixty-six percent of the lawyers surveyed cited Facebook foibles as the source of online evidence, she said. MySpace followed with 15 percent, followed by Twitter at 5 percent.

About one in five adults uses Facebook for flirting, according to a 2008 report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. But it's not just kissy pix with the manstress or mistress that show up as evidence. Think of Dad forcing son to de-friend mom, bolstering her alienation of affection claim against him.

"This sort of evidence has gone from nothing to a large percentage of my cases coming in, and it's pretty darn easy," Viken said. "It's like, `Are you kidding me?'"

Neither Viken, in Rapid City, S.D., nor other divorce attorneys would besmirch the attorney-client privilege by revealing the identities of clients, but they spoke in broad terms about some of the goofs they've encountered:

_ Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children.

_ Husband denies anger management issues but posts on Facebook in his "write something about yourself" section: "If you have the balls to get in my face, I'll kick your ass into submission."

_ 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.

The disconnect between real life and online is hardly unique to partners de-coupling in the United States. A DIY divorce site in the United Kingdom, Divorce-Online, reported the word "Facebook" appeared late last year in about one in five of the petitions it was handling. (The company's caseload now amounts to about 7,000.)

Divorce attorneys Ken and Leslie Matthews, a husband and wife team in Denver, Colo., don't see quite as many online gems. They estimated 1 in 10 of their cases involves such evidence, compared to a rare case or no cases at all in each of the last three years. Regardless, it's powerful evidence to plunk down before a judge, they said.

"You're finding information that you just never get in the normal discovery process — ever," Leslie Matthews said. "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."

Social networks are also ripe for divorce-related hate and smear campaigns among battling spousal camps, sometimes spawning legal cases of their own.

"It's all pretty good evidence," Viken said. "You can't really fake a page off of Facebook. The judges don't really have any problems letting it in."

The attorneys offer these tips for making sure your out-loud personal life online doesn't wind up in divorce court:

WHAT YOU SAY CAN AND WILL BE HELD AGAINST YOU

If you plan on lying under oath, don't load up social networks with evidence to the contrary.

"We tell our clients when they come in, `I want to see your Facebook page. I want you to remember that the judge can read that stuff so never write anything you don't want the judge to hear,'" Viken said.

BEWARE YOUR FRENEMIES

Going through a divorce is about as emotional as it gets for many couples. The desire to talk trash is great, but so is the pull for friends to take sides.

"They think these people can help get them through it," said Marlene Eskind Moses, a family law expert in Nashville, Tenn., and current president of the elite academy of divorce attorneys. "It's the worst possible time to share your feelings online."

A PICTURE MAY BE WORTH ... BIG BUCKS

Grown-ups on a good day should know better than to post boozy, carousing or sexually explicit photos of themselves online, but in the middle of a contentious divorce? Ken Matthews recalls photos of a client's partially naked estranged wife alongside pictures of their kids on Facebook.

"He was hearing bizarre stories from his kids. Guys around the house all the time. Men running in and out. And there were these pictures," Matthews said.

PRIVACY, PRIVACY, PRIVACY

They're called privacy settings for a reason. Find them. Get to know them. Use them. Keep up when Facebook decides to change them.

Viken tells a familiar story: A client accused her spouse of adultery and he denied it in court. "The guy testified he didn't have a relationship with this woman. They were just friends. The girlfriend hadn't put security on her page and there they were. `Gee judge, who lied to you?'"

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Facebook a "Treasure Trove" for Divorce Lawyers

By Larry Hartstein


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As if divorce lawyers needed more ammunition.

In a new survey, 81 percent say they've seen an increase in the use of Facebook and other social networking sites for evidence in divorce cases. Notes to lovers, compromising photos -- Facebook provides a wealth of incriminating information.

"Every client I've seen in the last six months had a Facebook page," said Ken Altshuler, a longtime divorce lawyer from Portland, Maine, who is first vice president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. "And the first piece of advice I give them is to terminate their page immediately."

Sixty-six percent of the attorneys surveyed by the AAML called Facebook the unrivaled leader for online divorce evidence, followed by MySpace (15 percent) and Twitter (5 percent).

"Going through a divorce always results in heightened levels of personal scrutiny," said Marlene Eskind Moses of Nashville, the group's president. "If you publicly post any contradictions to previously made statements and promises, an estranged spouse will certainly be one of the first people to notice and make use of that evidence."

Altshuler cited a couple cases in which Facebook proved key:

A woman was getting divorced from her alcoholic husband and seeking custody of their kids. The husband told the judge he had found God and hadn't had a drink in months, but Altshuler found a recent Facebook photo showing him "holding a beer in each hand with a joint in his mouth," the lawyer said.

Then there was the custody case in which his client's ex-wife claimed to be engaged. She was trying to show she'd provide a stable household for the kids.

But the same woman had posted on Facebook that she'd broken up with her abusive boyfriend and "if anybody had a rich friend to let her know," Altshuler said.

The ex-husband's friend gave him the posting; he was still Facebook friends with the ex-wife.

"People don't think about who has access to their Facebook page," Altshuler said. "A good attorney can have a field day with this information."

"Facebook is a wealth of information," said Kenneth Altshuler, the first vice president of the AAML who has been a divorce lawyer for 25 years. "My first advice to clients is: ‘Shut down your Facebook page."

Facebook and Divorce: Airing the Dirty Laundry

Not long after Patrick told his wife Tammie he wanted a divorce, she posted an angry, hurt note on "the wall," or public-comments section, of his Facebook page. Embarrassed that his colleagues, clients, church friends and family could see evidence of his marital woes, he deleted it and blocked his wife from seeing his page. A couple of days later, the IT worker in Florida--who asked that his last name not be used in this story — found alarmed messages from two Facebook friends in his inbox. Tammie had used a mutual friend's account to view Patrick's wall and e-mailed several women he had had exchanges with. He says her e-mails were borderline defamatory. She says they merely noted that he was married with children, a fact he had left off his Facebook profile. Either way: Ouch.

For those who want to connect or reconnect with others, social-networking sites are a huge, glorious honeypot. But for those who are disconnecting, they can make things quite sticky. And as the age of online-social-network users creeps up, it overlaps more with the age of divorce-lawyer users, resulting in the kind of semipublic laundry-airing that can turn aggrieved spouses into enraged ones and friends into embarrassed spectators.

Lawyers, however, love these sites, which can be evidentiary gold mines. Did your husband's new girlfriend Twitter about getting a piece of jewelry? The court might regard that as marital assets being disbursed to a third party. Did your wife tell the court she's incapable of getting a job? Then your lawyer should ask why she's pursuing job interviews through LinkedIn.

Battles over finances and custody remain the Iwo Jima and Stalingrad of divorce cases. Opposing lawyers will press any advantage they have, and personal information on sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn is like decoded bulletins from enemy territory. "It's now just routine for us to go over with clients whether they have an active presence on the Web and if they Twitter or have a MySpace page," says Joseph Cordell of Cordell & Cordell, a domestic-relations law firm with offices in 10 states. He advises his mostly male clients to scour their page — and their girlfriend's — for anything that could be used by their ex's legal team. Then Cordell studies the page of the soon-to-be ex-wife.

There's little the besmirched can do legally, unless there are children involved. Family-law courts routinely issue restraining orders to prevent one parent from disparaging another to a child. "The question is, If it's on the Internet, can that speech be blocked?" says Stephen Mindel, a managing partner at Feinberg, Mindel, Brandt & Klein in Los Angeles. "The First Amendment is going to come into conflict with the family-law courts."

Issuing an order to remove children's access to Facebook is pointless, says Chicago-based lawyer Jennifer Smetters. "The kids just go on a fishing expedition to find out what's so secret. And no child needs to see their parent being publicly humiliated." Smetters has seen cases where messages on a social-networking site were part of a harassment campaign that led to the court's issuing a civil order of protection.

It seems everybody — except perhaps some lawyers — would be better off if divorcing spouses gave each other some space on MySpace. But when confused, anguished people look for ways to work through their feelings, a social-networking site can be an almost irresistible venue.

Patrick and Tammie are still active on Facebook. So are decoupled East Coast residents Andrea and Adrian, even after "he told me he didn't have any money and then posted pictures of his new BMW bike," Andrea says. He says Facebook helped her stalk him. "It's had a very negative impact on our communication," he adds.

But there can be some positives. Tammie's friends post supportive messages on her Facebook page. And Patrick says he understands online social networks better now. "It's like putting everybody you know in the same room. I'm using it, but I'm much more careful."

"We had a custody case where a mom assured the court that she hadn't been drinking," recalls the Missouri-based attorney. "But her MySpace page had actual dated photos of her drinking — and smoking, which is also of interest." In another case, a mom had listed herself on a dating site as single with no kids, which Cordell's firm used to cast doubt on her truthfulness.

And that's just the courtroom stuff.

Half the fun of social-networking sites is the posting of personal news. The other half is the posting of personal opinion, something spurned spouses typically have in spades. MySpace and its ilk offer the giddying cocktail of being able to say something in the privacy of your home that will be publicly accessible, along with a chaser of instant gratification. All this at a time when people are often less than their best selves. On the walls of two Facebook groups — I Hate My Ex-Husband and I Hate My Ex-Wife, which together had been joined by 236 Facebook users as of early June — posts include all manner of (often misspelled) vitriol, including some colorful British slang: "my husband is ... a dirty smelly chavvy theivin alcoholic drug addict selfish scum bag" and "my ex wife is a no good lieing slag," each of which was posted alongside a smiling photograph of the commenter.

by time.com