Summary
Cybersecurity choices made during a family-law dispute—such as insecure document sharing, altering or failing to preserve devices, or neglecting cloud-account controls—have enduring legal and practical consequences: they create spoliation exposure (sanctions, adverse-inference instructions, evidentiary exclusions), can destroy or corrupt metadata and chain-of-custody integrity, invite criminal or regulatory exposure in severe cases, and leave surviving digital copies or account access that threaten post‑judgment safety, financial stability, custody determinations, and enforcement. To mitigate those long-term risks, practitioners should immediately implement litigation holds, engage forensic imaging and chain-of-custody protocols, document each security step to protect privilege and rebut spoliation claims, use encrypted client portals and MFA, avoid client-directed device alterations, seek tailored ESI protocols and protective orders, and draft settlement/parenting provisions that specify account controls, data-retention/destruction procedures, and injunctive remedies to preserve enforcement options after the case closes.
References
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