Maryland High Court Upholds Law Banning Same Sex Marriage

The opinion, all 224 pages, can be found here.

Tell-all PC’s and Phones Are Transforming Divorce

Fellow blogger Diana Skaggs, of the Divorce Law Journal blog, alerted me to an article from this weekend’s New York Times, which appears below:

A word of extreme caution is in order here. I have published articles here and here and here previously about how many of the techniques mentioned in this article violate state and federal criminal laws.

September 15, 2007
By BRAD STONE
The age-old business of breaking up has taken a decidedly Orwellian turn, with digital evidence like e-mail messages, traces of Web site visits and mobile telephone records now permeating many contentious divorce cases.

Spurned lovers steal each other’s BlackBerrys. Suspicious spouses hack into each other’s e-mail accounts. They load surveillance software onto the family PC, sometimes discovering shocking infidelities.

Divorce lawyers routinely set out to find every bit of private data about their clients’ adversaries, often hiring investigators with sophisticated digital forensic tools to snoop into household computers.

“In just about every case now, to some extent, there is some electronic evidence,” said Gaetano Ferro, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, who also runs seminars on gathering electronic evidence. “It has completely changed our field.”

Privacy advocates have grown increasingly worried that digital tools are giving governments and powerful corporations the ability to peek into peoples’ lives as never before. But the real snoops are often much closer to home.

“Google and Yahoo may know everything, but they don’t really care about you,” said Jacalyn F. Barnett, a Manhattan-based divorce lawyer. “No one cares more about the things you do than the person that used to be married to you.”

Most of these stories do not end amicably. This year, a technology consultant from the Philadelphia area, who did not want his name used because he has a teenage son, strongly suspected his wife was having an affair. Instead of confronting her, the husband installed a $49 program called PC Pandora on her computer, a laptop he had purchased.

The program surreptitiously took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds and e-mailed them to him. Soon he had a comprehensive overview of the sites she visited and the instant messages she was sending. Since the program captured her passwords, the husband was also able to get access to and print all the e-mail messages his wife had received and sent over the previous year.

What he discovered ended his marriage. For 11 months, he said, she had been seeing another man — the parent of one of their son’s classmates at a private school outside Philadelphia. The husband said they were not only arranging meetings but also posting explicit photos of themselves on the Web and soliciting sex with other couples.

The husband, who like others in this article was reached through his lawyer, said the decision to invade his wife’s privacy was not an easy one. “If I were to tell you I have a pure ethical conscience over what I did, I’d be lying,” he said. But he also pointed to companies that have Internet policies giving them the right to read employee e-mail messages. “When you’re in a relationship like a marriage, which is emotional as well as, candidly, a business, I think you can look at it in the same way,” he said.

When considering invading their spouse’s privacy, husbands and wives cite an overriding desire to find out some secret. One woman described sensing last year that her husband, a Manhattan surgeon, was distant and overly obsessed with his BlackBerry.

She drew him a bubble bath on his birthday and then pounced on the device while he was in the tub. In his e-mail messages, she found evidence of an affair with a medical resident, including plans for them to meet that night.

A few weeks later, after the couple had tried to reconcile, the woman gained access to her husband’s America Online account (he had shared his password with her) and found messages from a mortgage company. It turned out he had purchased a $3 million Manhattan condominium, where he intended to continue his liaison.

“Every single time I looked at his e-mail I felt nervous,” the woman said. “But I did anyway because I wanted to know the truth.”

Being on the receiving end of electronic spying can be particularly disturbing. Jolene Barten-Bolender, a 45-year-old mother of three who lives in Dix Hills, N.Y., said that she was recently informed by AOL and Google, on the same day, that the passwords had been changed on two e-mail accounts she was using, suggesting that someone had gained access and was reading her messages. Last year, she discovered a Global Positioning System, or G.P.S., tracking device in a wheel well of the family car.

She suspects her husband of 24 years, whom she is divorcing.

“It makes me feel nauseous and totally violated,” Ms. Barten-Bolender said, speculating that he was trying to find out if she was seeing anyone. “Once anything is written down, you have to know it could be viewed by someone looking to invade or hurt you.”

Ms. Barten-Bolender’s husband and his lawyer declined to discuss her allegations.

Divorce lawyers say their files are filled with cases like these. Three-quarters of the cases of Nancy Chemtob, a divorce lawyer in Manhattan, now involve some kind of electronic communications. She says she routinely asks judges for court orders to seize and copy the hard drives in the computers of her clients’ spouses, particularly if there is an opportunity to glimpse a couple’s full financial picture, or a parent’s suitability to be the custodian of the children.

Lawyers must navigate a complex legal landscape governing the admissibility of this kind of electronic evidence. Different laws define when it is illegal to get access to information stored on a computer in the home, log into someone else’s e-mail account, or listen in on phone calls.

Divorce lawyers say, however, if the computer in question is shared by the whole family, or couples have revealed their passwords to each other, reading a spouse’s e-mail messages and introducing them as evidence in a divorce case is often allowed.

Lynne Z. Gold-Bikin, a Pennsylvania divorce lawyer, describes one client, a man, who believed his wife was engaging in secret online correspondence. He found e-mail messages to a lover in Australia that she had sent from a private AOL account on the family computer. Her lawyer then challenged the use of this evidence in court. Ms. Gold-Bikin’s client won the dispute and an advantageous settlement.

Lawyers say the only communications that are consistently protected in a spouse’s private e-mail account are the messages to and from the lawyers themselves, which are covered by lawyer-client privilege.

Perhaps for this reason, divorce lawyers as a group are among the most pessimistic when it comes to assessing the overall state of privacy in the digital age.

“I do not like to put things on e-mail,” said David Levy, a Chicago divorce lawyer. “There’s no way it’s private. Nothing is fully protected once you hit the send button.”

Ms. Chemtob added, “People have an expectation of privacy that is completely unrealistic.”

James Mulvaney agrees. A private investigator, Mr. Mulvaney now devotes much of his time to poking through the computer records of divorcing spouses, on behalf of divorce lawyers. One of his specialties is retrieving files, like bank records and e-mail messages to secret lovers, that a spouse has tried to delete.

“Every keystroke on your computer is there, forever and ever,” Mr. Mulvaney said.

He had one bit of advice. “The only thing you can truly erase these things with is a specialty Smith & Wesson product,” he said. “Throw your computer into the air and play skeet with it.”

Source: Georgia Family Law Blog

Wedding Performed By Minister Ordained Via Internet Invalidated By PA Judge

PhillyBurbs.com reports that a judge in York County, Pennsylvania has invalidated a marriage performed by a “minister” who was ordained over the internet by the Universal Life Church (the same outfit discussed in a New York Times article to which I linked in a previous post). Pennsylvania law specifies the categories of people authorized to conduct a valid marriage ceremony: mayors, judges, and ministers, priests or rabbis “of a regularly established church or congregation.” The “minister” in question testified that he did not have a congregation with which he met regularly, did not have a place of worship, and was not a member of the Universal Life Church before his ordination. Given those facts, the likelihood that this decision will be overturned on appeal is, in my view, close to nil. Evidently the Universal Life Church is mulling an appeal of the decision. I can understand this – I would assume that the Church does not want to leave the door open to the argument that it is not a church as that term was intended in the Pennsylvania statute. That is an argument, I would say, best left for another day, and about which I express no view one way or the other. My advice – if you want your friend or relative to conduct your marriage ceremony, and he or she is not a mayor, judge or priest minister or rabbi in an acknowledged, mainstream religious denomination, do your due diligence, lest you make a big mistake.

Could Bear Market Mean Bull Market For Divorce?

The New York Times and New York Magazine each report that the uncertain financial markets could lead to a “bull market” for divorce. The periodicals report that wealthy clients in the financial-services industry are being counseled to consider ending their unhappy marriages now, “as a way to cut losses on future payouts.”

This mercenary theory works best for the spouse expecting to receive maintenance or child support and who expects the other spouse’s income to substantially decrease in the immediate future. It would certainly be advantageous to have support payments (which are income dependent) fixed before there is a loss in income.

It is notable that both articles mis-state a basic premise of divorce law. Assets are distributed equitably in New York. This does not necessarily mean that the assets will be divided 50-50 as stated in the articles.

Source: New York Divorce Report

Tips For Success At Your Settlement Conference

Many cases can get settled simply by getting the parties together to talk. This type of informal meeting is called a “settlement conference.” The following steps can help you prepare for a settlement conference and improve the chances of its success:

1. Identify the issues in your case.
2. Understand how the law affects your case.
3. Know the estimated costs of trial.
4. Remain open to unique opportunities.
5. Keep a few secrets.
6. Be determined.
7. Be ready for a little give and take.
8. Be patient.
9. Get it in writing.

Source: “Settlement Conference Success” by Helene Taylor, published at The Modern Woman’s Divorce Guide.
SOURCE FOR POST: South Carolina Family Law Blog

Source: Georgia Family Law Blog

Parents Can Get Burned By Kids Online Activity

Ever wonder what your child says about you when you’re not around? Does he spill the beans on your recent nose job or repeat that indiscreet crack you made about your boss? From the moment their kids first grab hold of a mouse, parents often warn them that what they say online could come back to haunt their future — the kids’ future, that is. But what about the parents?

In a little noticed but equally unsettling trend, mom and dad are discovering that their children are spilling some embarrassing — if not damaging — information on blogs and social networking sites that could hurt the parents. Disclosures run the gamut from unflattering portraits and pointed criticisms to intimate secrets, confidential business information and allegations of misdeeds. And while kids often think of their online revelations as akin to a private diary stashed under the bed, they offer everyone from your boss to the local police an unauthorized window into your life. “The result can be devastating,” says lawyer Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, a privacy and security group.

For more of what kids are revealing about their parents online — and what to do about it — turn to the September issue of SmartMoney Magazine1.

Disturbing examples have been cropping up all over the country. According to the police in Myrtle Creek, Ore., Kelly Jo Page was arrested in March for buying a keg of beer for her son’s 17th birthday party, after the boy posted photos of the festivities on his MySpace page. Then there was the man who lost his job in 2005 because his daughter confided in her online journal that Dad was drinking a lot because of his boss, whom he considered a “jerk.” And in Maryland, state police say they arrested a Galena, Md., couple in January after a woman found her 12-year-old daughter’s MySpace page stating that her father and stepmother had given her pot and cocaine. Diana May Bland, 24, and Richard L. Bland III, 30, face trial after pleading not guilty to child abuse, reckless endangerment and various drug charges.

No one knows just how many parents have been burned online, but according to Nielsen/Net Ratings, nearly 13 million kids ages 12 to 17 were using social networks in April 2007, up 17% from a year earlier. A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project noted that 31% of teen social networkers admit they have online “friends” they’ve never met. What kids probably don’t know is that those friends may include professionals ranging from cops and private investigators to headhunters and political opposition consultants, all of whom increasingly admit to searching children’s names and posts for information on their parents.

Most parents are only vaguely familiar with the budding world of social networks and what their children reveal there. Indeed, when a SmartMoney reporter asked Tulsa, Okla., father Mike Ferguson if he read his college son’s blog, he responded, “What’s a blog?” Guess he missed the entry in Michael Jr.’s online diary that recounted, in gory detail, why Dad quit his job.

Source: Smart Money