Alan Peppard on Facebook Divorce

Reprinted from The Dallas Morning News

By Alan Peppard

Friday, October 15, 2010

After seeing The Social Network, ponder this thought before contacting your old

sweetheart on the Internet: One fifth of all divorces involve some element of Facebook.

 

That sobering stat was passed on to me during a Thursday chat with Dallas Bar Association president Ike Vanden Eykel.

 

Ike is a partner at Koons, Fuller, the fourth-largest family-law firm in the country.

 

"When we start a case, one of the first things we go to is social networking to see who has shot themselves in the foot," Ike says. "The depth of people's ignorance defies imagination."

 

In the old days, your spouse's lawyer would produce evidence about you.

 

"But now, it's evidence produced by you," says Ike. "It's a pond that is stocked daily by the people swimming in it. If you're a fishing lawyer, you're going to catch something."