You may not have ever thought of yourself as a bad person and believe that you generally make good decisions. But when you are going through a divorce, you might be unpleasantly surprised to learn there are many things that could be used as evidence against you, suddenly making you look like the worst person on earth.
Social media posts
Almost everyone is on social media today and most of us have accounts that we have been using for many years now. Social media posts are used as evidence in many divorces today.
Your entire social media history now has the potential of being read by a judge. It is best to stop posting on all social media as soon as your divorce begins.
Text messages
The same goes for text messages. Many conversations take place through text, and text messages are written evidence. Be careful about what you say in text.
You will likely be tempted to make your social media accounts private, delete them altogether or erase your text message history when your divorce begins.
Trying to hide evidence
However, doing this could make things even worse for you if you are accused of hiding or destroying evidence. Additionally, there are usually ways to recover deleted messages or posts.
If your texts or social media posts are brought into court as evidence, you should have an opportunity to respond to them by providing context or an explanation. Perhaps you were joking, or messages before or after the message in question that would provide helpful context are missing.
New relationships
Perhaps your marriage is over because you met someone else. Florida, like most states, is a no-fault divorce state, meaning that adultery cannot be used against you in divorce.
That does not mean your new relationship will not impact the outcome of your divorce, particularly if you have children and there are custody decisions to be made. A court will likely scrutinize your new partner to make sure they are not a danger to your children.
You cannot predict the outcome of your divorce, but you can be prepared and know how to handle any negative evidence your spouse tries to use.