New here: think we got bad lawyer advice
Hi everyone,
I'm on here for a slight vent, maybe asking advice too.
My husband has joint custody of his kids, but they live with us full time. His ex and he never had a parenting agreement as to when physical custody would change over, until he married me, and I insisted there be a schedule. A "non legal-but verbal" agreement was put in place but over 18 months later there are still hiccups... So he scheduled a court ordered mediation to get something in writing and legalized.
Now here comes the lawyer part:
I found proof that his email account he uses for communications between his ex wife and lawyer only has been accessed by the same computer as his teenage daughter used to access her personal email while she was at her mother's. And I legally traced the IP address to the internet provider she.uses.
It is illegal to hack into someones personal email account and when I showed this information to our lawyer, the lawyer advised us to let it go.
The lawyer said that our goal should be harmonious reaching agreements for the parenting schedule.
I somewhat understand that, but come on! Someone hacked into his peraonal email days before the court date he had with his.ex wife and whoever it was saw all the communication he has been having with his lawyer!
It just seems like we should not sweep this under the rug JUST because we want a parenting schedule to be put in place.
I feel your pain. My DH has
I feel your pain. My DH has a CO with 50/50 with no schedule laid out. We are trying to hammer that out now and it is stressful. Perhaps re-read the emails to see or anticipate any items that might cause BM to see red?? Also, lock down the computers. My personal computer isn't used by anyone by my DH unless my bio son needs help for school and then I'm right there with him. Same with the phones. I've learned lessons the hard way. Good luck!
Wow I guess this must be
Wow I guess this must be common because my DH's custody arrangement is not a legal arrangement either. DH and BM haven't been to court in over 4 years (SD was 1 at the time) and they got 50/50 every other DAY. Well then they switched to every other week because every other day was stupid. Then when SD started school, that didn't work because BM lives 2 hours away so they switched to DH having SD during the week and BM having weekends (BM hasn't been taking her, but that's another story).
I keep telling DH he needs to go file for custody modification because we need to get this legalized in a written CO, but he is afraid BM will just take SD more to avoid having to pay CS or anything.
Anyway, I agree with Harley, make sure you change your password so NO ONE can figure it out, not even the skid. I am pretty sure hacking into someone's email is not legal; however, with no monetary damage, I can't see anyone actually going after the one who did it.. ya know? If I were in your shoes, I would be FURIOUS though so I am not saying it's not a big deal because it's a huge deal. Just realitically, I don't think anything will happen with it in the legal system. Just make sure it doesn't happen again!
Your DH needs to either set
Your DH needs to either set up a NEW account OR change the password to something they can't figure out. And keep the kid off the computer he uses at your house!
The kids have their own
The kids have their own laptop. They don't know his password. I work in the finance industry so we get training on how to make passwords difficult. She had to have paid someone to hack. She is not that smart.
My husband pays for EVERYTHING for the kidstheir mother sees them every other weekend.
Since it is joint custody their mother does not have to pay child support.
Wow. Can you email the lawyer
Wow. Can you email the lawyer from your work email (or your DH's if he has one) going forward? I work for a bank and I think it would be virtually impossible to hack my work email. My home email, however, has been hacked several times (and I had the strong passwords with the uppercase letters, #s, symbols, all that). I send all important things from my work email now.
"Since it is joint custody
"Since it is joint custody their mother does not have to pay child support."
DH and Bm have joint legal, kids reside with DH and I and see BM every other weekend. She pays him $200 a month in child support. It isn't much but she is still ordered to pay with joint legal.
It's not worth starting World
It's not worth starting World War III over.
Change the password is all that's necessary but make it a little complicated. Three words associated with things in the computer room seems to work well. For instance I have a picture my brother painted so a password is 'johnsfarmsilo' which is the theme of the painting.
My husband is in IT, so I
My husband is in IT, so I will talk based on things he has told me. His company has had to testify in court to prove things like you are saying. To get this going, from what I understand, you would have to pay an IT firm to do what you did to prove this, then subpoena them to court. Then if you can prove that it was from BMs computer, you have no evidence it was BM and not the kid. It is possible that you could find out who she paid to do this, but even that would be hard. It could be a lot of expense for probably nothing to come of it. When my husband has had to testify it is usually for law firms or big insurance companies- organizations with hundreds of thousands to spend on cases of fraud like this.
Yes she is obviously batshit, and this is a huge violation of trust. But I think your attorney may be right on this one- proving it could be very difficult
IMHO. Let it go. Even if you
IMHO. Let it go. Even if you could prove that ex-wife was haking into your husband's account and was privy to email discussions between your husband and his lawyer, it will have absolutely no bearing on the child custody issue.