Who gets custody of the Facebook profile?

Original Article by Aisha Sultan for St. Louis Post-Dispatch

When two parents get divorced, it becomes difficult for one parent to try and control what information the other parent can post online about their children. For example, Stacy Thibodeaux found pictures of her children on her ex-husbands Match.com profile, and was furious. She says he simply blocked her from viewing his profile.

Thibodeaux, who has now been divorced for nearly five years and has recently remarried, said she realized she could not control what her ex-husband did with their children’s pictures. But, had it occurred to her during the divorce, it may have been helpful to have established some ground rules about their children’s digital exposure as part of the custody agreement, she said.

The best thing to do is sit down and talk it over with your former spouse, and come to some sort of agreement. That is exactly what Meredith Friedman and her ex-husband did.

“We decided together not to put our kids on Facebook,” she said. He convinced her that it was more of a security issue. Now that their children are older, they do include some family pictures on their pages.

Probably the best advice is to shut down your social media profiles as soon as you begin considering a divorce. That is what Alton Abramowitz, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, recommends.

Parents who post questionable pictures that may potentially embarrass a child later might find those same pictures and status updates used against them in court. It speaks to poor parental judgment, he said.