When Sarah Boulby tells clients going through a divorce or locked in a custody battle that their texts and social media posts might be put under a microscope, she usually gets one of two responses.
Often, people are “mortified,” particularly in the face of any out-of-character messages, the Toronto family and divorce lawyer said.
At other times, they come armed with reams of texts and other communications they believe demonstrate their former partner’s misbehaviour, she said.
“They say, ‘See, you can see what she’s doing or he’s doing,’” said Boulby, a partner at Boulby Weinberg LLP.
“It can be a minefield, because it’s no longer he said, she said, there’s actual concrete evidence that can be recovered, digital evidence.”
As people’s lives and relationships have increasingly shifted online over more than a decade, digital records such as text messages, emails and Instagram posts have become a mainstay of divorce and …