Facebook a top cause of relationship trouble, say US lawyers

COURTESY: Guardian, UK

Social networking site becoming primary source of evidence in divorce proceedings and custody battles, lawyers say…

Photographs taken from social networking sites are a rich source of evidence, divorce lawyers say.

When Facebook gets involved, relationships can quickly fall apart – as Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi have discovered. But dictatorships are not the only ties being dissolved by social networking sites: now Facebook is increasingly being blamed for undermining American marriages.

Even though the rate of divorce in the US has remained largely stable in recent years, American divorce lawyers and academics have joined Middle East analysts in picking out Facebook as a leading cause of relationship trouble, with American lawyers now demanding to see their clients’ Facebook pages as a matter of course before the start of proceedings.

“We’re coming across it more and more. One spouse connects online with someone they knew from school. The person is emotionally available and they start communicating through Facebook,” said Dr Steven Kimmons, a clinical psychologist and marriage counsellor at Loyola University Medical Centre near Chicago.

Yet while the US media has been quick to trumpet any evidence of Facebook as the country’s leading marriage-wrecker, the truth is “It’s complicated,” as the site’s relationship status would have it.

A recent survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML) found that four out of five lawyers reported an increasing number of divorce cases citing evidence derived from social networking sites in the past five years, with Facebook being the market leader.

Two-thirds of the lawyers surveyed said that Facebook was the “primary source” of evidence in divorce proceedings, while MySpace with 14% and Twitter with 5% lagged far behind.

Those statistics included not just evidence of infidelity but other legal battles, such as child custody cases in which parents deny using illicit drugs but boast of smoking marijuana on their Facebook pages.

Photographs harvested from social networking sites – including those posted by friends or colleagues on their own pages – are a particularly rich source of damning evidence, according to divorce lawyers.

“This sort of evidence has gone from nothing to a large percentage of my cases coming in,” Linda Lea Vicken, a member of the divorce lawyers’ group from South Dakota, told Associated Press.

Marlene Eskind Moses, president of the AAML, said the openness and sharing of social networking sites left their users’ public and private lives more exposed.

“If you publicly post any contradictions to previously made statements and promises, an estranged spouse will certainly be one of the first people to notice and make use of that evidence,” said Moses.

Statistics for January from online analysts Nielsen showed 135 million people in the US visiting Facebook during the month – nearly 70% of the country’s internet users. On average, users spent more than seven hours a month visiting the site, far longer than the less than half an hour spent on visits to Amazon or the average of two hours and 15 minutes on Google, America’s most popular web destination.

The overall rate of divorce, however, appears to be unaffected by the advent of social media. The most recent published data – from 2009 – shows the overall divorce rate declining, slightly more slowly than the shrinking percentage of Americans who get married every year.

It is little wonder that negotiating “Facebook divorce” status updates has become another unhappy event for failed romances, over when to launch the site’s infamous broken-heart icon out into the glare of the world’s news feed.

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Being Served Legal Papers Can be Traumatic

If you are fortunate enough to make it through life without ever being served legal papers, you are doing something right!  There was a bumper sticker craze years ago – the stickers read: “S__t Happens.”  Well, from a Lawyer’s vantage point:  ”Life Happens!”

People are served papers every day for unpaid debts, dog bites, minor car accidents, failure to pay rent, divorce, the list is  l-o-n-g…, if not endless.

The legal act of delivering a court filing to a person is called “personal service.”  You might have heard someone say they have been “served with papers” – it is the exact same thing. Frankly, it can often be be embarrassing and traumatic depending on where and when the Sheriff’s Deputy or private process server found you and served with some kind of court filing. Chances are you will have some sleepless nights where your mind wrestles with the service and your anger at the formality of pulling you into a public legal battle where others – strangers for the most part – are butting into your private life and threatening you, possibly your freedom, certainly your finances and your sense of personal security and well-being.

The Legal Papers you Were Served With will Have the Following:

The papers will:

• Name of the court where the case is pending
• The type: Summons, Complaint, Subpoena, and Discovery Request
• The names of the parties, (e.g., John Doe vs. Jane Doe)
• The case number
• Some kind of certification that you were served (e.g., in person, by mail, etc.)
• Instructions for answering the complaint or a form to fill out.
• Tell you when the court date is or date requiring an “answer”
• A list of allegations, which constitutes the complaint. The paper may or may not be titled “Complaint”

Moreover, oftentimes there is some kind of correspondence, either from an attorney to the court clerk or to the other party. If you have been served personally, the letter might be addressed to you personally.

What You Should Do If Served Legal Papers

Because virtually ALL legal papers that are served contain a deadline, you should take immediate action.  More specifically, you should contact an attorney. Most attorneys, including our office, offer a no-cost consultation about virtually any legal matter that you might be facing. Doesn’t it make good sense to find out all there is to know about your options?

If the filing directs you to be somewhere or do something, you must do so, and to procrastinate or ignore the situation is asking for big trouble. It is just not worth it! If you fail to act, to answer the complaint, or to appear as directed, you could be found in contempt of court and a bench warrant issued for your arrest. Moreover, what might be a simple matter of answering and having the situation “go away” might —if you do NOTHING— cause you to sacrifice any defense you might have had and an unfair or unjust legal judgment could be entered against you. Please don’t put your head in the sand. Take immediate steps to protect yourself. We have had clients come to see us for a free consultation, who entered our offices on the verge of a panic attack — totally stressed out, and left completely calm and relieved as we have agreed to answer the complaint and handle the ENTIRE problem on their behalf.  They likely went home and had their first restful night’s sleep since the papers were served.

Upshot? - Don’t freak out. Personal service is a very important process that does have legal significance, but it won’t affect your ability to live your life, for the most part.  Being served with a Complaint doesn’t mean the whole world will be caving in on you; doesn’t mean you’re guilty of anything, necessarily. Being served is just the formal way that our society and legal system functions as you are notified that a lawsuit has been filed against you. Again, receiving a Subpoena, alone, doesn’t mean you have necessarily done anything wrong. All it means is you’ve been ordered to show up at a court-related proceeding, perhaps provide some documents, or something that someone’s legal case requires to move forward – with little or no potential harm to you.

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Most Family Law attorneys get the occasional phone call from the client who claims that their divorce is going to be simple and want the attorney to represent both sides. Unfortunately, there are two fundamental problems with this idea.

First, there is no such thing as a “simple” divorce. Ending a marriage is complicated.

Second, one attorney can never represent two parties in a divorce. According to Lawyer Rules 101, a lawyer “Shall not represent a client if the representation of that client will be directly adverse to another client.” There is simply no practical way to complete a divorce where the parties are not at odds with one another.

There are some simple and cost-effective, non-adversarial approaches for resolving a divorce which are recognized in all states of the union: mediation and collaborative law. These two processes fall under the heading of “Alternative Dispute Resolution: and may be a more practical and certainly less-costly solution for the non-adversarial divorce.

Mediation - Divorce Mediation is pretty straight forward. Essentially, a third party, “the mediator,” is a person who helps facilitate communication. This usually happens in a daylong event where everyone is present in one building. The mediator sits with each spouse privately and has the opportunity to go back and forth between the spouses (who are usually separately represented by their own attorney).

The mediator’s job is to gain insight into what is driving the dispute and the reason why each person is taking a particular position. The mediator works with the both spouses until the dispute is resolved or there is an impasse. Obviously, mediation has the added expense of a third party facilitator (the mediator), but this cost is downright cheap compared to the price to have one’s dispute resolved by a judge in open court.

Collaborative Law – Collaborative divorce is a process in which you and your spouse negotiate an acceptable agreement with legal assistance from your respective collaborative attorney. You and your spouse each hire a separate attorney who advises and assists you in negotiating a settlement agreement – usually in one sitting in one day unless there are lots of property and custodial issues and little initial agreement. You meet separately with your own attorney and then the four of you meet together should it be necessary. A collaborative divorce may also involve other professionals, such as a child custody specialist, therapist, tax professional or an accountant. Normally, both spouses and their attorneys sign an agreement that requires the attorneys to withdraw from the case if a settlement is not reached and then the case goes to court. It is almost always better to reach a settlement outside of the courtroom where the judge, who doesn’t know you, or care about you (or you and your children) – and will then make decisions for you.

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States Get Tough – No Matter the Economy

To attempt to clamp down on the mushrooming amount of unpaid child support, many states have passed laws that allow for interest and fees to be added to delinquent child support accounts. Given the state of the economy, especially here in Sacramento County, and the inability of many to find work, many delinquent parents have lost all hope that they will ever get caught-up on their child delinquent support payments. Parents who become seriously delinquent find that the local District Attorney comes looking for them threatening criminal charges and jail time. This is tantamount to adding insult to injury because most of us have no control over the historically debilitating national economy and the horrible local Riverside County economy and severe shortage of jobs.

With unemployment soaring here in Sacramento County, there are a growing number of people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and simply cannot find work. As they fall farther and farther behind in their court mandated payments is there any reason to believe that won’t be paying child support for the rest of their lives, once they find a job? If you find yourself in this dire situation, a modification could save you ten’s of thousands of dollars of debt that is piling up month by month. Don’t put your head in the sand and hope that it will all go away - it will not!

Contact the Family Law Attorney Mellanie Marshall to see about a child support or spousal support modification and put a stop to the bleeding of your current and future earnings. Until you get a modification the payments will continue unabated and your account arrears will build and build. Be pro-active and nip the situation in the bud ASAP!

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During the holiday seasons many spouses who have split up begin the “fight” regarding who gets the kids, for how long and when.

In California, if you have a court ordered holiday schedule, the holiday schedule will supersede your regular schedule. Most courts define kids “holidays” as the day the children are released from school until the day they return to school at the conclusion of the break from school.

If you don’t have a visitation agreement that specifies the holiday schedule (and some Family law Attorneys might suggest that you don’t make a written agreement), here are some tips to help you through the holiday season with as little stress and fighting as possible:

1 – Be Willing to Compromise. Its rare that you will get both Thanksgiving and Christmas.
2 – Make Plans for Yourself. If you don’t have Thanksgiving this year, you will have it next year. Make Thanksgiving plans and enjoy it yourself – whatever you do, don’t give your kids a guilt trip, they should be able to spend time with their other parent without having to feel guilty.
3 - More than one holiday celebration is not a bad thing. What kid is going to complain about having two (2) Christmases?

4 - Don’t agree in writing to share the holidays. Why? You never know what is going to happen in the future. What happens if your circumstances change dramatically and your new wife/husband won’t understand why they have to have your ex-wife/ex-husband at their Thanksgiving dinner. When you put the holiday schedule in writing, you are stuck with that indefinitely.

5 – Don’t make holiday assumptions. If you are planning on travelling for a holiday and there is no agreement as to who gets the kid (s) on that holiday this year, make sure you speak with your the other parent before booking flights or hotel rooms. Never assume that the holiday is yours. Obviously, you will have better success at getting a particular holiday if you speak with the other parent first and ask them whether you can have the kids.
6 - Plan ahead for holidays. The sooner you can come to an agreement about the current year’s holiday schedule, the smoother the holidays will go.
7 – Create new holiday traditions. Creating new traditions with your children to make the holiday season special is a great idea. Life is not going to be the same once you and your spouse split, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create new and meaningful traditions.

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Domestic Violence – Common Occurrences

Most Family Law Lawyers will, one day, receive this exact question from a potential Domestic Violence client: “What will happen to their Domestic Violence case if their wife calls the police, the prosecutor, or the court and advises them that they were angry at the time of the incident and made up the whole story?”

Well, as a Family Law attorney, my first response is that I would absolutely want to use such an admission that the allegations against my client were false so as to defend my client.

Unfortunately, altering or recanting of the original story will not result in the charges being dismissed. Instead, these sorts of efforts can constitute Contempt of Court or be viewed as a serious NEW crime. In worst case, both the original Domestic Violence defendant and the original witness (Domestic Violence victim) could be charged with multiple felonies for carrying out this type of plan.

If the alleged victim later recants their story on the basis that they intentionally provided false information to law enforcement they are, in fact, admitting that they are guilty of a separate crime of making a false statement to law enforcement. Making a false statement to law enforcement is, minimally, guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to thirty days in jail.

If that is not bad enough, if the alleged victim shows up in court and testifies that they are recanting their story, but their testimony is not considered credible by the prosecutor, they can also be charged with perjury. Perjury can be prosecuted as a felony and carry a penalty of up to 5-years imprisonment in state prison.

Furthermore, if there is evidence that the original Domestic Violence defendant and the alleged victim conspired together to present false testimony then they could be charged with Criminal Conspiracy. This is a felony that carries up to five years imprisonment.

It can go from bad to worse… If there is evidence that the Domestic Violence defendant urged the victim, or other witness, to come to court and change their story to a version not agreed upon by the prosecutor then they both could alone be charged with Solicitation to Commit a Felony. Like Criminal Conspiracy, this is a felony and punishable by up to five years imprisonment in state prison.

Upshot? Defending a Domestic Violence arrest is not as easy as just getting someone to change their story to make everything “go away.”  State and County prosecutors and the courts are under a lot of societal pressure to take ALL Domestic Violence cases very seriously. If you study these trends as do those who defend people in Domestic Violence case, you will likely get a consensus of opinion that this seemingly harsh trend can be traced back to the very public O.J. Simpson trial of 1993.

If you have been arrested for Domestic Violence and want to avoid a conviction it is important for you to consult with a Domestic Violence Defense Attorney as soon as possible. Contact experienced attorney Mellanie Marshall at (916) 520-3512 to schedule an appointment.

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One of the most overlooked and significant penalties for those convicted of criminal domestic violence comes as a result of the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban.

This is a relatively new and ALL POWERFUL Federal law that prohibits ANYONE convicted of Domestic Violence from being in possession of any firearm.

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Since 1994 Domestic Violence Arrests and Prosecutions are UP!

Ever since the 1994 OJ Simpson acquittal there has been a huge increase in new domestic violence arrests in this country. Police officers here in Sacramento, in Atlanta, in Los Angeles — all across the country were encouraged to aggressively enforce the laws in domestic cases where they previously might have considered these cases private family matters and not law enforcement matters.

Furthermore,  special prosecution teams and domestic violence police units were created throughout the country as new laws were enacted to allow the police and prosecutors to more aggressively to pursue perpetrators of domestic violence.

Following OJ Simpson Trail – New Domestic Laws Created

In many states, new laws were enacted to allow for the warrant-less arrest of those suspected of domestic assaults under certain circumstances – even when the defendant was only “suspected” of committing a misdemeanor. Over the years, it is becoming clear, that some law enforcement and prosecutors have taken advantage of these new laws and many, many persons have been falsely arrested on the premise of being “proactively overly cautious.”

Dr. Lorandos explains changes in Domestic Violence Since OJ Simpson & Defense Strategies

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You have a Facebook Account – Like 400 Million Other People

Myspace is “history.” Facebook is now King of the Hill. It seems like everyone has a Facebook account these days. Domestic Violence defendants are just as likely to have a Facebook account as anyone else… Be Advised! Facebook is the first place that police, District Attorneys and Prosecutors turn to to capture evidence to paint a picture of those they are soon to be prosecuting. Trust us, the police and prosecutors will be checking for your Facebook page and other social media sites that you have an account at and will be taking screen shots and downloads of your postings for their case file.

So what stuff that you might post on your Facebook account might cause you some concern? You’d be surprised! Postings that may be viewed negatively by Domestic Violence Prosecutor and the court includes:

• Complaints or negative comments about the police
• Any comments about your arrest
• Postings that show you use alcohol or drugs
• Comments of your current frustration with your case, the DA, or the Court
• Any comments that you are in violation of “no contact” or restraining order violation(s)
• Controversial opinions; even your political views and leanings
• Any sexual comments, references or opinions

Minimally, your Facebook account should be set to private but if you have 75+ “friends” all the police have to do is to “befriend” one of your friends and they are “in.” Once “in,” they can oftentimes see your full account. We would strongly suggest that your social media accounts be completely EDITED of any content that could be construed as “problematic.”

You’ve watched enough TV to see that all defendants show up in court wearing new clothing: men in suits, women in conservative attire.  Your online image is just as important – because if there is anything there that paints you in a negative light, there might be a 4-foot tall blowup in court for all to see in your immediate future.

Moreover, since your Facebook and other social media accounts have links to EVERYBODY in your LIFE — everyone in your personal network — that comprehensive LIST is a police and DA’s road map to people who can be interviewed to get information about you; your past indiscretions (if any), and to lead investigators to personally contact people whom they could compel to testify against you. Again, we would STRONGLY recommend that you immediately CLOSE or SUSPEND all of your Social Media accounts until the conclusion of your Domestic Violence case. This advice applies to ALL criminal cases – not just Domestic Violence cases.

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