In today’s modern world, social media is a huge part of our everyday lives. We use it to share milestones with our families and friends and to express our opinions. However, when it comes to a child custody case, posting on social media does more harm than good. Courts today regularly see evidence from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat in family law matters, especially when it comes to child custody.
We have seen clients and adverse parties in the past whose use of social media has been a detriment to their child custody cases, we urge our clients to think before you post!
One example of something to be careful of on social media is photos of you having drinks with friends, or at a party, really picture can be picked apart and a different narrative can be created. Though in reality, this might have been just an innocent night out, once it is out on social media, your ex-partner can use the photos to create a narrative of you being an excessive drinker or an irresponsible parent. Our advice: better to err on the side of caution and not have these photos taken in the first place.
Another example we often see at our firm are parents getting very emotional on their social media and ranting about their ex-spouse or their children. This is a big NO! Share these feelings with your family and loved ones, but do not share on social media. Most importantly never make derogatory comments about your ex-spouse on social media, you should never do it anywhere, but definitely not there. Judges care about co-parenting and want to maximise both parents’ contact with their children when it is appropriate and bad-mouthing your ex-spouse to the world will not look good to the judge. There have been cases where parents posted about how their ex-spouse was alienating their children and when their children saw this post on social media, they were extremely embarrassed that everyone knew their family’s personal business. This evidently did not help the parent’s case.
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Parents should also be very careful about venting about judges or their court case on social media. What goes on in the courtroom is confidential and this information should be nowhere near your social media.
Parents have also created fake social media profiles in order to watch their children’s social media and in order to argue that their children’s actions on social media support the notion that they should receive full custody or whatever the request sought might be. This approach does not bode well in court and is often frowned upon by a judge as a violation of privacy rather than as a tool to strengthen the parent’s case.
Our team understands the prevalence of social media and how many of its uses are extremely positive but we strongly urge you to be careful when you’re going through a divorce or a custody trial.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the best child custody lawyer in Montreal!
