Facebook Cheating

Facebook Being Used for Divorce Evidence

People are cheating on their spouses using Facebook and more divorce lawyers are returning to the scene of the crime for evidence, the New York Post reports.

A whopping 81 per cent of matrimonial lawyers say that in the past five years they have seen a massive spike in the use of social-networking information as evidence of infidelity, a new poll shows.

The most widely used cyber-evidence – including messages to lovers and incriminating photos – is found on Facebook, the survey from the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers reveals.

“Every client I’ve seen in the last six months had a Facebook page,” said the group’s vice-president, Ken Altshuler, “and the first piece of advice I give them is to terminate their page immediately.”

Sixty-six per cent of those surveyed said they would used Facebook postings as evidence, with 15 per cent from MySpace and 5 per cent from Twitter.

Wall of evidence on Facebook

Mr Altshuler said he has had three cases in the past six months where Facebook postings were a key piece of evidence.

In one case, he was representing a woman getting divorced from her alcoholic husband and also seeking custody of their kids. the man had told the judge he had found God and had not had a drink in months.

The claim was exposed as bogus thanks to Facebook pictures of the man partying at a friend’s house three weeks before the court hearing.

“The friend had a picture of him holding a beer in each hand with a joint in his mouth,” mr Altshuler said, leading the judge to question the man’s credibility.

He also cited another recent custody case where his client’s ex-wife had claimed she was engaged and set to be married in a bid to show how stable her household was.

That was called into question by the woman’s Facebook posting where she wrote “she had broken up with her abusive boyfriend and that if anybody had a rich friend to let her know.”

“Don’t do anything because you don’t know who’s looking. A good attorney can have a field day with this information,” mr Altshuler said.