Lifetime alimony lost due to Facebook flub

In the past, we have written about the use of Facebook evidence in divorce cases. The use of Facebook evidence to resolve disputed claims in a divorce is becoming increasingly common. A recent divorce case illustrates how impactful Facebook evidence can be.

A family court judge recently sided with an ex-husband on the issue of alimony after seeing evidence from a social networking site that the man’s former spouse was not disabled as she had claimed, but was actively working as a belly dancer. The ex-wife had claimed to be disabled in a car accident and was requesting $850 per month in alimony from him for the rest of her life.

Despite her claims of being disabled, she apparently spent several hours a day performing as a belly dancer. She also spent many hours each day posting about her belly dancing on the Internet. The posts made their way into court as evidence on the issue of her need for alimony.

The belly-dancing woman told the judge that the reason she belly danced was for physical therapy reasons, as a way to recover from injuries she had received in a disabling car accident in the mid-1990s.

The court did not find the woman’s testimony credible compared to the evidence the ex-husband presented clearly showing the effervescent blogs of his ex-wife’s belly dancing activities. The judge took a dim view of the woman’s claim and ordered that her requested $850 monthly spousal support for a lifetime be reduced to $400 each month for limited time of two years.

In addition to cutting the amount and the time limit on the spousal maintenance owed to the ex-wife, the judge in the case also decided that the ex-husband should receive 60 percent of the proceeds of the sale of the couple’s home and that the woman should pay thousands of dollars for her ex-husband’s legal fees.

Source: New York Post, “‘Disabled’ woman seeking alimony revealed to be belly dancer,” Dareh Gregorian, 4/16/2011