Facebook, Friend of Divorce Lawyers 494
crimeandpunishment writes "A lot of Facebook users going through divorces have learned a very costly lesson about their privacy settings. In fact, for many of them their Facebook pages helped lead to the divorce in the first place. More than 80% of the members of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers say they've used or run into evidence gathered from Facebook and other social networking sites over the last five years — and some of them have some very entertaining stories to tell. 'Facebook is the unrivaled leader for turning virtual reality into real-life divorce drama,' said AAML's president."
And some useful advice (Score:2, Informative)
"WHAT YOU SAY CAN AND WILL BE HELD AGAINST YOU"
"BEWARE YOUR FRENEMIES"
"A PICTURE MAY BE WORTH ... BIG BUCKS"
"PRIVACY, PRIVACY, PRIVACY"
Useful advice, and not just on Facebook. Sorry about the caps, but that's how this advice was posted in the article.
Re:People who cheat should blame themselves, not F (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it is not.
It may violate your ethics, moral guidelines, religion or what-have-you. But it is not stupid. On the contrary, successful cheating does require considerable mental ressources, especially if you want to keep the affair going (and secret) for a long time.
It is also a built-in drive, the same way that hunger and thirst are. Look up Helen E. Fisher and read a few of her books, she is the foremost authority on the biology that drives lust, love and attachment. Here's a great TED talk of hers on the subject: http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat.html [ted.com]
Re:People who cheat should blame themselves, not F (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just think before you share (Score:2, Informative)
You can untag them - if you don't have a facebook page, people can stick your name in, and you'll never know.
You can also remove the photos link from your profile altogether (or make it restricted to friends only, etc).
Re:People who cheat should blame themselves, not F (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe in certain states, but those states that have no-fault divorce whether you cheated or not has nothing to do with how the marital property is divided or how alimony is ordered.
Simple way to avoid this issue (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need to avoid using facebook, just avoid marriage.
What the point of getting married, considering the high probability of catastrophic ending ? Oh, it will not happen with you, only others...
Re:People who cheat should blame themselves, not F (Score:2, Informative)
just because somebody used to interpret something one way doesn't mean they always will.
to me, the line "to have and to hold" is STILL true if you make certain arrangements ahead of time with your partner. they key to anything is communication, as long as you're both comfortable with what you're doing, there's no discomfort,
and if you're both not comfortable, why the fuck are you getting married!?
Re:People who cheat should blame themselves, not F (Score:4, Informative)
Who knows, the Bible isn't really worth anything really to a Christian marriage....
The traditional marriage vow does not contain a reference to the bible, the ten commandments or anything like that. In case you are particularily dense, it's the phrase with the "in good days and in bad days" and the "till death do us part".
So, in fact, if you want to play it legal, the partner filing for divorce is actually the one who is breaking the vow.
Yes, adultery is a sin that you should be stoned to death for on the market place by the rest of the village, according to the bible. Which is precisely the point I was making: It is not an explicit word, vow, promise, whatever that was given. It is an implicit content of the cultural background.
Re:People who cheat should blame themselves, not F (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, if the bible is an implied part of the marriage contract, then I shall proceed to take all married couples to court for not following through on a lot, and I mean a whole freaking LOT of other stuff that's in the bible.
Like putting witches to death. Stoning homosexuals. Killing everyone who dares to work on a sunday.
Or are we at the "pick and choose" game again, when it comes to the bible? As in "yes, it is the holy book, the word of the unfailable god himself, but we don't really use all the parts..." ?
And before it comes - all the adultery stuff is part of the old testament. You know, the one that also contains all the killing for ridiculous offenses. And the parts where you're instructed to put entire populations to the sword. Except for the young women which though shalt rape. The new testament actually says something on adultery [wikipedia.org]. Interpretation open, but one way to read it would be a hippie approach of "dude, we're all doing it, so what?" - which is pretty strongly supported by statistics. Throughout their lives, the vast majority of us humans cheat at least once. If we'd really kill everyone that does, we'd have a highly effective technique for population control on our hands.
Re:People who cheat should blame themselves, not F (Score:4, Informative)
True, the vows are not in the bible, but the ten commandments are.
As is the instruction on what to do with adulterers. Funny, I don't see people following through on that. So please don't start arguing with content of the bible, unless you're willing to either take all of it, or admit that even the most devout christians are picking and choosing. In which case you lose the strength of the argument, because if you are allowed to pick "no adultery" and leave out "stoning of homosexuals" then please explain why someone else can't make the opposite choice?
Bible says, don't commit adultery.
It also says that if you just conquered an enemy tribe, you shall kill all the men and children and then rape the women. I guess that doesn't count as adultery. ;-)
So you may not have said in your vows you wouldn't cheat, but by being Christian you shouldn't be cheating, so forgive the spouse for expecting that....
No, perfectly ok. My argument isn't that cheating is fine. My argument is that it's an implicit agreement, based not on anything you actually promised, but on the context in which the promise was made. On that point, we don't really have a disagreement, I just considered it vital to point it out since the OP that I replied to was so insisting on words and promises and vows.