Theoretical Divorce Case

Civil Cases can utilize digital evidence in a multitude of ways. Let’s examine a theoretical divorce case and how digital evidence may affect both sides. On the husband’s side, his legal team pulls public posts from the wife’s Facebook that display a lifestyle of heavy drinking and partying. They also pull public posts of Venmo transactions that show irresponsible spending and crude messages. The wife’s legal team utilizes digital evidence in a different way. They perform a logical extraction to access text messages between the couple that show emotional manipulation and abuse from the husband towards the wife. When the husband’s legal team catches wind of this, they choose to perform a physical extraction to go through the messages. Using this process, they uncover deleted messages and messages that were not provided by the wife’s legal team to present context for the messages sent, as well as messages that paint the husband in a way contrary to what the wife’s legal team presented.

Cases like this display the range of which digital evidence can be used in civil cases. Both the husband and the wife have strong cases, with the husband even having some potentially exculpatory evidence. However, both sides displayed strong bits of digital evidence that could turn the case either way.