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Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Michael Mantell with another Family Law Matters, joined by Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, the owner and managing partner of the Primus Family Law Group. Hi, Bonnie. Hi, Michael.

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Bonnie, today we have, of all the ones we’ve done, and we’ve done many of these, one that has just got me speechless, and that doesn’t happen often for those of you who know me. This question just blew me away. Someone wrote to us and said that they’re in the process of divorce and they wanted to shut down their Facebook and all social media accounts.

They just wanted to be off it, they don’t want to be out in the public for a period of time, and they were advised, uh-uh, you’re not allowed to do that right now. Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, formidable, relentless family law attorney, please explain to us why we need to leave our social media accounts up in the middle of a divorce. Believe it or not, you can’t shut it down because it’s evidence.

You can’t, if you delete your account, it goes away, or at least as far as this old lady can understand, it goes away, and so you can’t access it. And unfortunately, that’s not permitted. That is closing down stuff that you started either before the marriage, but you continue during the marriage, and it may contain evidence.

So we all, as a general rule, part of our retainer agreements are sent out in a different letter. You are not allowed to destroy electronically stored information, ESI. You must keep those things open because otherwise you are destroying evidence.

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Even if you’ve never said anything bad about your spouse or you’ve never done anything weird or you’re not caught doing something illegal, you still can’t do it in case the other side wants to subpoena it or discover it or ask questions about it. Everything is open in a divorce. Everything is transparent, including social media.

So often we do regularly tell our clients, be careful what you post. Just like we tell our children, it’s always out there. Be careful what you post.

Be careful what you post as a spouse or as a person going through or your friends of friends, because it’s large. It’s ever expanding. Just very quickly, we only have a moment left.

So if I have a look at my account and I see pictures of me and my spouse and they hurt to look and I don’t want to see those pictures anymore, I can’t delete those pictures? No. My goodness. You can stop opening up the app so that you don’t see them.

Got it. I can unfriend my spouse? Yes. Okay.

Bonnie, people are going to have questions about this. I know it because they’re just, this is a shock. If they want to reach you, how can they be in touch? They can reach us at 619-574-8000 or they can reach us at www.PrimusFamilyLaw.com. Thank you very much, Bonnie.

Continue to see you here at the next Family Law Matters. Have a great one, Michael.