Balancing your privacy and your ex’s need for information

During the divorce process, you will go through discovery. This is a time when you and your ex try to find out as much about each other and the situation as possible. Of course, there are limits to what can be done. For example, the information exchanged must be important to the divorce and the matters that must be decided.

One question that comes up sometimes is whether a diary should and can be included in this process. This is something that depends on the situation, but there is a chance that your diary could become part of the divorce.

In many cases, whether a diary will be handed over to an ex is up to the court. Of course, you can opt to hand it over, but you should seek out the advice of your lawyer before you do this. If you aren’t willing to just hand it over, your lawyer might be able to get a court order that will prevent you from having to turn it over.

Your ex does have the right to petition the court to read your diary. The thing here is that the court has to balance out your right to privacy with your ex’s need to know what is in the diary. It might come down to the court deciding to only allow specific points of the diary to be exchanged.

There is an old saying that you shouldn’t ever put anything in writing that you don’t want made public. Your personal thoughts and life fall under this warning, especially when you are going through a divorce.

Source: FindLaw, “Can My Ex-Spouse Read My Diary During a Divorce?,” George Khoury, Esq., accessed July 26, 2017