On behalf of The Marks Law Firm, L.L.C posted in Divorce on Monday, October 8, 2012
As it is with so many aspects of our lives, technology is reshaping divorce. A few years ago, a husband might suspect his wife of cheating, but today he can install surveillance software on her cellphone and laptop and stick a GPS device on her car to find out who she’s talking to and where she’s going.
In fact, that’s exactly what one man who suspected his wife of cheating did before their divorce. “It was awful,” his ex says of the constant scrutiny. (By the way, she denies that she ever cheated on her former husband.)
But she says his suspicions and his spy gear compelled her and her children to converse in whispers out in the yard (in case the house was bugged) and search the garage for cameras.
The former husband’s spying eventually landed him in jail for a month on a conviction of stalking her.
“Whenever I tell people of this, they say, ‘I’d have done the same thing,'” the ex-husband insists.
The high-tech spy gear he made use of was once gadgets dreamed up for James Bond movies; now available and affordable online and in stores. Rather than hiring an expensive detective to track a spouse under suspicion, many wives and husbands are undertaking their own sleuthing.
One marriage counselor says, “If someone begins to have thoughts that they are being betrayed, they become obsessed with finding out the truth. Privacy does not exist in 2012.”
We’ll have more on the changes — both good and bad — technology is bringing to marriage and divorce in our next post.
If you would like more information about our family law firm, please visit our St. Louis divorce page.
Source: Wall Street Journal, “A Spy-Gear Arms Race Transforms Modern Divorce,” Oct. 5, 2012