You can feel your phone buzzing all day with angry texts, social media screenshots, and tense emails from your spouse, and part of you is wondering which of these messages will follow you into a Massachusetts courtroom. Or you may already have things on your own phone or accounts that you regret. At the same time, you might suspect your spouse is hiding something online, from dating profiles to undisclosed bank accounts.
In the middle of a divorce or a breakup that is clearly heading that way, digital evidence can start to feel overwhelming. Every message, every photo, and every comment starts to look like a potential exhibit. You might be tempted to start digging through your spouse’s devices, deleting posts, or taking screenshots of every unpleasant interaction. Some of those instincts can seriously hurt your case in a Massachusetts divorce.
At Miller Law Group, P.C., we handle divorces and custody disputes across Massachusetts, and digital evidence now appears many cases that we see. Our attorneys regularly review clients’ texts, emails, social media, and online financial records when we build a strategy. Because we meet weekly as a team to talk through every active case, we see how judges in different local courts are responding to these issues in real time, and we use that collective experience to guide clients away from avoidable digital mistakes.
Types of Digital Evidence That Can Help or Hurt Your Divorce Case
Digital evidence is any information that lives on a phone, computer, or online account that can help prove or disprove something the court cares about.
In divorce and custody cases, this type of digital evidence can mean:
- Text messages
- Email threads
- Social media posts
- Direct messages
- Photos and videos
- Messaging apps like WhatsApp or Snapchat
- Cloud backups
- Online financial records such as bank or payment app histories
This list is by no means exhaustive. If it is stored electronically and can be tied to one of you, your children, or your money, it can become part of the case.
Digital evidence can most often be used in three major areas.
First, in parenting and custody disputes, judges look closely at texts, emails, and social media to get a sense of each parent’s behavior, communication style, and decision making. For instance, if a parent claims to be sober or to spend all of their time with the children but their social media shows repeated heavy drinking or frequent trips away, a judge may question their credibility. On the other hand, venting about the judge, the other parent, or the children online can create serious problems, even if the post was intended for friends only.
Second, in cases involving abuse or a request for a restraining order, messages and posts can show threats, harassment, or patterns of control. Angry or manipulative texts from the other side can support your request for boundaries or limited contact.
Third, in financial disputes, online banking, credit card statements, and payment apps can show spending patterns, transfers to undisclosed accounts, or regular payments to someone else. These records can support claims about hidden assets, unreported income, misuse of marital funds, or other issues that can affect how property and support should be handled.
A judge is not interested in reading every unpleasant text you and your spouse have ever sent. Judges want clear, credible information that helps them decide questions such as whether a parent can coparent effectively, whether someone is being honest about income, or whether there is a safety risk. Digital evidence is powerful because it often captures people speaking in real time, without the filter they use in court.
Collecting Digital Evidence for a Divorce Without Crossing Legal Lines
The way you gather digital evidence is just as important as what that evidence shows. There is a big difference between preserving information you can already see legitimately and breaking into accounts or devices to look for more. Courts can look at how evidence was obtained, and crossing legal boundaries to try to catch a spouse can create new problems for you, separate from the divorce itself.
Generally, you can preserve, screenshot, or download:
- What is on your own phone
- Your own accounts
- Shared devices or accounts that you have consistently used with your spouse
- Messages that were sent to you
- Photos stored on a shared family computer
- Joint bank statements that you have always accessed
The key is that you are not taking new steps to get around privacy settings or security that your spouse reasonably relies on.
By contrast, forcing your way into private spaces is risky. That can mean guessing or using passwords to log into your spouse’s email, social media, or cloud backups when those accounts were not truly shared. It can include installing tracking apps, key logging software, or other programs on their devices without their knowledge, or intercepting communications that were not meant for you. These actions may violate privacy or computer access laws and can give the other side ammunition to attack your conduct.
Improperly obtained evidence may be excluded by the court, and the process of obtaining it can damage your credibility. Judges expect divorcing spouses to act lawfully even when emotions are high. If the other side argues that you hacked into private accounts, that issue can overshadow what you found, and in serious situations can lead to separate legal trouble or affect how the judge views your judgment in parenting matters.
What You Can Do If You Suspect Hidden Accounts
If you suspect that there hidden accounts, secret profiles, or other online misconduct involved, our family lawyers can discuss what safer options you have. Formal discovery tools in Massachusetts family cases, such as document requests or subpoenas, can sometimes be used to obtain records directly from financial institutions or service providers. Before you log into any account that is not clearly yours, we encourage you to speak with legal counsel so we can weigh the potential benefit against the risk and choose the right path.
Smart Ways To Preserve Texts, Emails, and Social Media Posts
Once you understand what you should and should not access, the next step is preserving what you already have. The goal is to capture key information clearly and completely so it can be understood later by your lawyer, the other side, and the court. Sloppy screenshots, missing dates, or partial message threads can raise questions about accuracy, which undermines the point of having the evidence at all.
For text messages and app conversations, clear screenshots are a good start. Make sure the image shows the date, time, and the name or number of the other participant, not just the message bubble. If the conversation is long, capture a series of screenshots that overlap slightly, so it is easy to confirm you did not skip any part of the exchange. Some phones and apps allow you to export a full message thread as a file, which can be easier to search and organize.
For emails, saving or printing the whole message, including headers that show the sender, recipient, and date, is important. Forwarding emails to yourself can sometimes change formatting, so downloading or printing directly from the account, if possible, is better. With online financial records, saving PDFs of statements or transaction histories is usually more reliable than taking photos of a screen.
Social media needs special care. Once a divorce is on the horizon, deleting posts related to the relationship or the case can create problems, especially if litigation has already started and the other side is aware of the content. At the same time, you can adjust your privacy settings going forward and stop posting about the case, your spouse, or your children. If your spouse has public or semi public posts that concern you, take screenshots or print pages that show the date, the account handle, comments, and any images clearly.
Organizing what you collect is just as important as capturing it. Judges and lawyers do not have the time or patience to sort through hundreds of out of order screenshots. At Miller Law Group, P.C., we are able to help clients group digital evidence by issue, such as parenting exchanges, threats, or financial discussions, and by timeframe. That makes it easier for us to decide what is truly relevant and to present a clear, focused story instead of a confusing document dump.
How Massachusetts Family Courts Evaluate Digital Evidence
Massachusetts judges are accustomed to seeing digital evidence in divorce and custody cases, and they approach it with some consistent questions in mind. The first is relevance, meaning whether the evidence helps decide something the court actually has to rule on. A cruel comment from years ago might be painful, but if it does not connect to parenting, safety, or finances, a judge may give it very little weight.
The second question is reliability. Judges want to know that a text, email, or screenshot is what it appears to be. That involves authenticity, which is the process of showing that an item is genuine and has not been altered. In some cases, especially when there is a dispute about whether something is real or complete, we may need to rely on original devices, account records, or technical information about the file to back it up.
Court rules around hearsay also apply to digital evidence, although in family cases messages are often used less for the truth of what they say and more to show how someone communicates or behaves. For example, an email where one parent repeatedly insults the other in front of the children may be significant even if it does not contain factual claims. By contrast, a secondhand statement from an unknown person in a comment thread may not carry much weight because the court cannot assess that person’s reliability.
How Our Divorce Lawyers Can Use Digital Evidence to Help Your Case
A practical reality is that judges do not want to read every line of every message you submit. In busy Massachusetts courts, time is limited. Lawyers often prepare selected exhibits, summaries, or timelines that highlight the most important parts of longer conversations. Our job is to pick out what matters most, arrange it in a form the court can absorb quickly, and be ready to provide additional context if the judge asks.
Because we assign each client to an attorney who works regularly in the court where their case is filed, we pay attention to how individual judges prefer to see digital evidence. We know whether a certain judge is more open to electronic formats, while another may prefer paper exhibits, if they encourage summaries and charts, or if they want to see at least a sample of full message threads. Our weekly case meetings give us a chance to share these practical insights across the firm, so our approach to digital evidence reflects what we are seeing in courtrooms across Massachusetts.
Common Digital Mistakes That Can Damage Your Divorce Case
One of the most damaging mistakes is continuing to send angry, threatening, or sarcastic messages to your spouse during the case. Even if you feel provoked, those messages often end up printed out in court. A parent who repeatedly calls the other parent names or makes threats about access to the children by text is handing the other side an argument that they cannot coparent constructively. Judges look at ongoing communication patterns as a window into your ability to put the children first.
Another frequent issue is venting on social media about the case, the judge, or your spouse. Posts that insult the court system, share private details about your children, or rally friends against the other parent can be used to question your judgment. Even if you believe your privacy settings are locked down, screenshots travel quickly. Once a case has started, the safest approach is usually to take a step back from posting about your personal life, and never to post about the litigation itself.
Deleting or cleaning up messages and posts after a dispute has begun can also backfire. If the other side already has copies, or if they are able to obtain records through legal discovery, missing content raises questions about what you removed and why. That can hurt your credibility and, in some situations, lead to consequences such as unfavorable inferences about what the deleted material showed.
People sometimes try to manage digital evidence by cherry picking partial screenshots that leave out their own hurtful words or important context. Judges are used to this. Once the other side produces the full thread, selective cropping makes you look less trustworthy. A better path is to focus on changing how you communicate now.
A Team-Based Strategy for Complex Digital Evidence
In many divorces, digital evidence consists of a few key message threads and a small number of posts or statements. In others, especially long term relationships with shared devices and many accounts, the volume can be overwhelming. A single lawyer working alone can struggle to sort through it all and to see patterns that matter. That is where a team based approach can make a real difference.
At Miller Law Group, P.C., every case benefits from our weekly team meetings, where attorneys, paralegals, and staff review developments and share insights. When digital evidence is involved, that might mean looking together at a collection of texts and deciding which ones clearly support a client’s position, or talking through how a particular judge reacted to similar evidence in another matter. This collaboration helps us avoid both extremes, ignoring helpful digital information on one hand or burying the court in too much on the other.
In complex financial cases, we often coordinate with forensic accountants who are experienced in working with electronic banking and transaction data. They can analyze online statements, payment app histories, and other digital records to identify unexplained transfers or patterns that suggest hidden income. That analysis becomes part of a coherent narrative about the marital estate, not just a pile of numbers.
When digital content raises serious questions about parenting, such as repeated hostile messages involving the children or posts that show risky behavior, we may work with custody evaluators. These professionals consider electronic communications as one piece of the parenting picture. Presenting the material to them in an organized form, rather than a disorganized folder of screenshots, allows them to focus on patterns that matter for the children’s best interests.
Talk With Us Before Your Digital Footprint Becomes a Bigger Problem
Digital evidence is no longer a side issue in Massachusetts divorces. For many families, it shapes how judges see communication patterns, parenting decisions, and financial honesty. The good news is that you have real control over what you do next, from how you communicate going forward, to what you preserve, to how you and your lawyer present that information in court.
If you are worried about what is already on your phone or online, or if you suspect your spouse is hiding something digitally, a focused conversation with an experienced lawyer who can help you avoid costly mistakes. At Miller Law Group, P.C., our team model means that when you bring us your phone full of messages and your stack of online statements, you are not relying on a single person to make sense of it all. You are drawing on the shared experience of a group that continually learns from cases across the Commonwealth.
You can reach out to our Massachusetts family lawyers today to request a free consultation to discuss your case and what steps you can take to protect your rights. Call (888) 874-2142 today.