Many people make mistakes during their marriage. Those missteps can fall just about anywhere on the spectrum of severity, though, with some of them posing a serious risk to the desired outcome in any divorce case filed in the future. If your marriage is coming to an end, then you might be concerned about how your marital acts will be used against you in your divorce proceedings. It’s a legitimate concern. After all, evidence of marital wrongdoing could affect everything from property division and alimony to custody of and visitation with your children. Therefore, as you head into your marriage dissolution, it’s crucial that you understand how to properly defend yourself against alleged marital bad acts.
That can be difficult to do, though, and you may find it challenging to avoid getting tangled in the weeds of your marriage. Fortunately, there are ways to focus your arguments to ensure you’re addressing the legal issue in play. Let’s look at some of the strategies that you might be able to implement so that you can choose the path that’s right for you.
When your spouse brings up a mistake that made during marriage, it can feel like you’re behind the 8-ball in your divorce. But it doesn’t necessarily have to shake out that way. Here are some tips that you can utilize to minimize the harm caused by allegations of marital misdeeds:
- Use the rules of evidence to your favor: If your spouse wants to rely on your mistakes to build their divorce case, then they’ll need to present evidence to prove what they’re alleging. That’s easier said than done. They may run into issues with admitting evidence from social media or text messages, and they could try to rely upon hearsay. It’s up to you to raise objections to this evidence to block it from being used against you. Otherwise, the court will be free to rely upon it when issuing its ruling.
- Attack witness credibility: Your spouse is certainly motivated to paint you in a bad light, which gives you an opening to attack the reliability of their testimony. But you might also be able to address the credibility of other witnesses who are called to testify about your alleged bad acts. So, do your homework on these witnesses so that you’ll know whether you can point out inconsistent statements that they’ve made or can highlight how they’re biased against you or are otherwise motivated to help your spouse hand you a bad outcome.
- Mitigate the harm: If the evidence of marital bad acts is coming in at trial, then you might want to pivot to mitigate the harm that evidence causes. This could be showing how you and your spouse repaired your marriage in a meaningful way after that point or how you’ve taken steps to better yourself since the incident in question.
- Go on the offensive: Even if you made a mistake during marriage, there’s a chance that your spouse has committed error, too. It’s important to highlight these missteps for the judge so that it’s clear that there’s plenty of blame to go around. This could lead to a much fairer outcome.
Regardless of the facts at hand, you can’t let your spouse run with the evidence and drag you through the divorce process. You have to find a way to regain control so that you can aggressively advocate for the outcome that’s right for you.