It’s hard not to vent your frustrations on social media about your upcoming divorce. However, you need to resist the temptation. Anything you write or share on social medica can become evidence used in depositions or court proceedings. You do not want to write anything that you would be embarrassed to have read aloud in a public courthouse.
In short: the wrong move on social media can turn a relatively normal divorce into a nightmare – and it can turn an already contentious divorce into an absolute disaster. Here are four major mistakes you need to avoid.
Spying on your spouse’s activity
You can’t move on until you let go – and you can’t let go if you’re spying on your spouse’s social media pages. Block them, so you aren’t even tempted to comment or respond to them.
Intentionally provoking conflict
You may have a lot of feelings about your spouse to work out, but it’s better to do that in therapy than on social media. Disparaging your spouse to the whole world is likely to provoke retaliation and more trouble. This is always true, but becomes even more important when children are involved. Judges do not like to see parents disparaging one another on social media, especially if their children have access to those accounts and can see what their parents are saying.
Posting contradictory content
Are you trying to convince the court that you’re at your financial breaking point? Showing off your impulse purchases (even if they were made on credit), your trips on a boat or your fine dining experiences can come back to haunt you in court.
Making threats
No matter how irritated you are at your spouse, their attorney or the court, it’s better to keep a civil tongue – especially in print. You don’t want inflammatory comments or threats made on social media to be shown at your next court hearing.
If you can’t bear to get off social media altogether while your divorce is pending, stick to posting positive memes, set your privacy settings on “high” and keep mum about the proceedings. That will help your divorce go much more smoothly.
But there is something helpful you can do
Before you block your spouse (or they block you), go back through their social media and save copies of all the kind things they have said about you during your marriage. Save the posts about your good parenting, hard work, and other praises your spouse may have shared about you during happier times. This may allow you to demonstrate that their criticisms about you during the divorce are more related to the current proceedings than reflecting their true beliefs.
