Can her e-mail and Facebook traffic be used against her?

[careerdadandsoldier]

I have suspected my wife has been cheating for a while. Two weeks ago, she left her FB account logged on and I found a message to her best friend talking about her stalking my son's karate instructor and found messages to him about her leaving poems on his truck. She says that she has not slept with him, but admits she would have by now if she had been given the opportunity. She also said that she is not done pursuing him, because "She does not know what she wants." I also found about 100 e-mails between her and her best friend that are very descriptive, to include videos that she has secretly taken of him using a camera disguised as a pen and pictures. He was a friend on her FB at one point but she has since deleted him. In these e-mails and messages, there have been things that she has said that leads me to believe that this guy could pose a threat to my 15 year old daughter and 10 year old son. The FB message to her best friend which tipped me off to this whole thing said that someone had the key to my house and had stolen shoes and ear rings and that he had stolen it back and she suspected that he had entered my house. She also suspects that he has the ADT key ring sensor that deactivates the alarm. She said he hasn't talked to her since September but the messages were from April from my STBX to her best friend and her boyfriend. She has also told her best friend that she suspects he may be mixed up in drugs (meth and cocaine) and in a letter to him that she wrote on a word document and left it on her desktop for everyone who uses that computer to see, she was angry at him because he is 27 and seems to favor the teenage girls in his class. I have downloaded all of this e-mail traffic and organized it in chronological order with all of the pictures and videos she has taken. I am stationed in California and my STBX and kids live in Nevada where I bought a house last year planning to retire after 20+ years in the Army. I am afraid for the welfare of my kids and want to know if these things would be used as evidence against her to prove that she is not fit.
Additionally, she does not go to bed until 3, 4, sometimes 5 (like today) in the morning. The kids are on summer break but this happens year round. I believe the correct word is neglect. On the weekends that I have to stay in California, she sleeps until 1 PM while our kids just roam around the house because I've told them not to go outside without an adult awake. This has been going on for 10+ years. Her mom and dad know it and all of my family members know it too. Can this be used against her?

[Fatheroffour]

Yes, her digital footprint can be used against her but its value is limited to what you want to use it for.

Attempting to prove adultery in a no-fault divorce doesn't do much good. Proving adultery in an attempt to gain custody isn't a winning strategy. Attempting to prove child neglect with emails is flimsy at best.

And is you claim your wife has been neglecting the children for the last ten years yet are just getting around to acting on it, you won't get much mileage from that either.

[Trevor]

1. Sorry about your discovery, dude. Warning, I caught my then-wife and it turned me into a private investigator of sorts...don't let the search for more evidence of the same thing become an obsession. You know she is cheating or planning to cheat, so the trust is broken. Don't confront her with it yet; at some point you should use it in negotiations because she is not going to want the word to be leaked into the public record. Protect your evidence.

2. Learn everything you can about state statutes for divorce, custody, child support, and property division. Read The List.

3. Decide whether the marriage is salvageable after the trust damage which has occurred. Janice Spring's "After the Affair" is a good book to guide you through reconciliation...and if reconciliation isn't the result (as in my case) it will help you process closure.

4. Obviously, change the locks on the house as soon as you can. ADT can probably replace the fobs as common as losing them must be, relegating the "stolen" one obsolete.

5. I can see how mention of the drugs and (at least) unauthorized entry raises the concern for your kids' safety. Have they mentioned anything unusual to you? Do you talk to them frequently enough to have a sense of a change in their demeanor during this time of your wife's emotional affair and intent to have extramarital sex?

6. Being a trashy wife does not equate to being a lousy parent unless she is exposing directly the children to danger, or having sex in front of them, or sharing/providing drugs to them. From what you've written, seems the label "unfit mother" would be a big stretch for the courts.

7. The kids are old enough that her sleep schedule is not an issue, unless there is a track record of truancy at school and poor grades. The court would rightly ask if this has been the case for 10+ years, why is it all of a sudden important. You have helped create a monster by allowing her to sit home on her fat crack while the kids were in school, when she could have gotten a job and help contribute financially to the household.

8. Become a student NOW of the things in point #2 above. Come back and ask questions along the way.

[Mossyhorns]

Trevor is right about it becoming an obsession if you let it, when I divorced the first time I let it rule my life for a while. My wife had been active in an affair, and left me for they guy, and introduced my kids to him within 2 weeks of moving out of my house, it was traumatizing and I just had to find out more about what she was doing and who he was etc... it made me sick, physically, mentally, and spiritually for way too long. Take Trevor's advice, choke it down, accept it as best as you can right now, but point your focus on something more positive, don't let having to find out the details poison you.

[hoosier_dad]

I am stationed in California and my STBX and kids live in Nevada where I bought a house last year planning to retire after 20+ years in the Army. I am afraid for the welfare of my kids and want to know if these things would be used as evidence against her to prove that she is not fit.

You are in California and your STBX and children are in Nevada? And you're considering kicking off a divorce filing now?

Very bad timing for you if you are. Regardless of proof of adultery and some evidence that you could try to argue her unfit, you'll be almost guaranteed minimal parenting time with your children until you move to where they live. How soon will you be retiring and moving to Nevada? Anyway you can put the divorce off until you can move where your children are?

[Fatheroffour]

Just be careful with your strategy if the kids welfare is actually at stake.

She's been neglectful for 10 years and you don't do anything about it but when you find out she's cheating you file for divorce?

Very easy to paint you as nothing more than a scorned spouse slinging mud.

[expo09]

Yes it can. Anything can be used as evidence and emails etc have been used in many divorce's. Social media is beginning to play its part in divorce as well.

[jamessick]

Yes it can. Anything can be used as evidence and emails etc have been used in many divorce's. Social media plays a huge part in divorce as well.

There, fixed that for you.

[Fatheroffour]

Social media didn't play a big part in my divorce but the old fart judge admonished us both for having internets in the house with the kids.

[kmich91262]

internets

FoF, are you related to the former president...George Bush? Them there internets I tell you are the scourge of the earth. Hehe!