Text Messages Become New Weapon in Divorce Attorney’s Arsenal

Text messaging has become an increasingly important means of communication, but unhappy couples, who know they are headed for a nasty divorce, should be more careful about what they write on their smart-phones. Divorce lawyers have added text messages to their list of useful weapons that can come back to haunt a person in court.

According to American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), more than 90 percent of the country’s top divorce attorneys have used text messages and other information gleaned from a smartphone as evidence in a divorce trial, as reported by Reuters.

President of AAML, Ken Altshuler, told Reuters, “With emails you can think about and rewrite them. There is a window of opportunity to rethink what you are saying but text messaging is immediate. We get a lot of text messages that people send out without thinking.”

A text message is a record of a person’s thoughts, intentions and actions and can be used as evidence. These messages can be damaging to the person, who sends them and can result in an unfavorable judgment.

Altshuler also said that in the past six months he has seen an increase in the number of text messages used in a trial. Other information gathered from a smart phone such as GPS, phone numbers and internet search history can also be introduced as evidence, this can be damaging to the final settlement and thwart a divorce attorney’s hard work.