It is important to know what to do when it comes to posting on social media during a divorce. Our advice here at ADAM is that you should NOT post to any social media if there’s a divorce pending, if there’s a divorce about to happen or even if you are in any sort of custody and parenting time dispute. In particular, not posting to Facebook or other places through social media is important.

Recently we had a client who was going through a divorce and things were very contentious, he and his wife were not getting along, especially when it came to issues with custody of their two children. His divorce case was pending, it’s already been filed, there’s been a response and there were a lot of issues going on. They’re already in court fighting about things and disagreeing over things, and one of the accusations in the divorce case was that the wife was claiming that the husband (our client) was an alcoholic. She was claiming he was unfit to take care of the children, and that the wife should have sole physical custody of the kids, his parenting should be supervised and he should be limited with what time he is allowed with his children.

Then, in the middle of this contentious divorce case and custody dispute, the client went out on a weekend when the kids weren’t with him. He went to a bar to watch a football game on TV with his friends and posted some pictures on Facebook of him and his friends drinking beer and having a good time. We show up in court a week later and his wife has these photos printed out and wants to use them as exhibits in the motion that she filed to try to limit his parenting time claiming he is at it again, drinking and out with his friends and drunk all the time. The reality was that this person is not an alcoholic, there was no proof that he was an alcoholic and there was little to any drinking going on. This one occasion was sort of the exception and beyond that there was really not much else happening in the way of drinking. But the photos told a different story, and his wife would not have had any photos had he stayed off of social media and not posted them in the first place. Now we found ourselves responding to photos being submitted as evidence in court.

The point is, with this kind of fighting and disagreement going on, the best thing to do would’ve been to stay off of social media, stay off of Facebook. Resist the temptation to post things, whether you are trying to show that you are having fun, having a good time or proud of your kids, or happy about something. The best idea is to just go completely dark, don’t be on social media if there is any sort of litigation coming or anything pending. No good will come from posting, and your best strategy is to just completely stay away from it and avoid social media. You do not need something to be used against you in court or the other person in your case, your wife or whoever, trying to spin your post and make it into something that you’re not. We don’t want anyone to mis-characterize your behavior. It could mislead the court, their attorney or whoever it might be into thinking you are something that you’re not.