If you are in the process of getting a divorce, you may want to think twice before you hit send on that text or email on your smartphone. According to a recent study, there has been a widespread increase in the number of divorce cases using data obtained from smartphones as evidence.
The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), a group made up of over 1,500 family law attorneys across the country, conducted the survey. It found that 92 percent of the organization’s members noted a rise in the use of smartphone evidence over the past three years. More specifically, 94 percent reported an increase in evidence stemming from text messages.
Text messages represented 62 percent of smartphone data used as evidence, making it by far the most common type of smartphone evidence used. Second place belonged to emails (23 percent), followed by call histories/phone numbers (13 percent) and Internet search and GPS histories (a combined 1 percent).
Considering in today’s world how many of us use our phones for just about everything this increase is perhaps not that surprising. The president of the AAML explained that “As smartphones and text messaging become main sources of communication during the course of each day, there will inevitably be more and more evidence that an estranged spouse can collect.”
The next time you reach for your iPhone, BlackBerry or Droid remember that it is possible your texts, calls, emails or internet history may be used as evidence in a divorce proceeding.
Source: AAML, Lawyers Finding Divorce App in Smart Phones, 8 February 2012