Family Law
in the Age of Facebook
Be careful what you post—
Plano family law attorney
Rick Robertson has seen
e-communications come
back to haunt
BY PAUL SWEENEY
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEREMY ENLOW
Call her Ms. Smith. She was single, fun and
interested in men, she declared on her Facebook
profile. Photographs on her page depicted her
canoodling with her latest boyfriend at a Dallas
cocktail lounge. A Budweiser sign is prominently
displayed overhead.
But for Rick Robertson, the family law attorney who was
representing her soon-to-be ex-husband (call him Mr. Smith) in a
divorce and child-custody dispute, Ms. Smith’s Facebook postings
afforded a Perry Mason moment.
Until then, Ms. Smith had successfully been denying her
husband full visitation rights with his infant son on grounds that he
was “abusive and had alcohol issues.” After Robertson asked for—
and got—Ms. Smith’s Facebook password in open court, however,
the discussion no longer turned on Mr. Smith’s moral character but
on her own.
Ms. Smith’s statements and postings on Facebook “came back
to bite her,” Robertson says. “The woman was clearly not single,
but still married. She was also the mother of a 1-year-old son.”
The result? Ms. Smith undermined her credibility and
accusations toward Mr. Smith. Robertson’s client won full visitation
rights and ultimately gained leverage in securing more favorable
terms in a divorce settlement. Even so, as Robertson emphasized
while sitting in his tastefully appointed offices overlooking the
manicured fairways of Gleneagles Country Club’s golf course in
Plano, a posh suburb just north of Dallas, divorce court is not the
place for clear-cut legal victories.
“In family law,” Robertson says, “we’re dealing with people’s
