Divorce and Technology

 

Was listening to NPR this morning and heard an interesting story.  Goggled it and found the following article by Melissa Knowles in Trending Now at  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/woman-dumps-boyfriend-finding-him-another-woman-online-200641774.html#   entitled, “Woman Dumps Boyfriend After Finding Him with Another Woman in Online Map”

“There is no good way to find out that your significant other is cheating on you, but one woman in Russia discovered her boyfriend's infidelity in a pretty surprising manner. Marina Voinova was looking up an address on Russia's version of Google Maps, Yandex Maps. She wanted to get a closer glimpse of a building using the street view feature. So she zoomed in, and there was her boyfriend Sasha with his arms around another woman.

Well, perhaps it was just an old picture that was taken before he and Marina were a couple. Only problem with that was that Marina and Sasha had been together for five years, and the Yandex Maps feature has only been around for three years. And, the plot thickens: Sasha is seen in the photograph with his arm in a cast, which he had to wear last summer.

When Sasha returned home, Marina asked him to type the address she had looked up into Yandex Maps. Once Sasha saw the incriminating image of himself, Marina said, his entire face changed color and he confessed everything.

Marina promptly broke up with her boyfriend after her discovery and said it would be "silly to blame the Web for my boyfriend's unfaithfulness." Now, instead of searching online maps, Marina is single and searching online dating sites.”

This relates to a recent conversation with an attorney friend.  He attends the Legal Tech show each year.  He advises me that more and more of the show deals with disclosure and production of online data.  Attorney now request this information and are given huge quantities of material that may be difficult for either side to decipher.  As a result contested divorces are now longer and more expensive. Parties are now checking email more.  Requesting all contents of hard drives.  Checking EZ Pass toll records.  It is amazing what people put on Facebook and accessing it is a no brainer. There does not seem to be a limit.  Perhaps this is another good reason to use divorce mediation!

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