What NOT to Do on Social Media During a Divorce – Straight Talk with Jill Spielberg
Valentine’s Week is all about love, but let’s be real, love doesn’t always go as planned. And when it doesn’t, social media can make things way worse (like Exhibit A in court worse).
That’s why I brought in Jill Spielberg, partner in charge of the Family and Matrimonial Law Department at Abrams-Fensterman LLP, to drop some major truth bombs about social media and divorce—what not to do, what could cost you in court, and even how to protect your kids.
Biggest Takeaway? STOP POSTING!
According to Jill, the best thing you can do during a divorce is take a social media hiatus. That vacation selfie? That vent session about your soon-to-be-ex? That new relationship post? All of it can be used against you. Even “friends” might not be real friends when emotions run high.
A few ways social media can totally backfire:
*Posting about your amazing new life while claiming you can’t afford child support
*Sharing party pics that could be used in a custody battle
*Saying anything negative about your ex—your kids might see it, too!
The Flip Side: Can Social Media Help During a Divorce?
Not really, says Jill. But if you must post, make it positive—like supporting your co-parent’s achievements. Otherwise, keep the drama offline.
Why Divorce Hits Hard During Valentine’s Week
January is known as Divorce Month, but February can be brutal too. While stores are overflowing with hearts and candy, many people are struggling through heartbreak. If that’s you, know this: You are not alone.
Jill’s pro tip for avoiding divorce in the first place? APPRECIATION.
The #1 reason couples split isn’t money or infidelity—it’s feeling unappreciated. Let that sink in.
A Personal Story of Divorce
Years ago, my daughter, an only child of divorce, always swore someday she’d have her own house and host every single holiday so she’d never have to “choose” between parents on a holiday again.
Well, fast forward, and guess what? My ex-husband, his current wife, his former wife after me, her current husband, myself and my significant other, my daughters adorable sister I’m not related to and her husband (and our 2 cute grandkids) all these years later… actually granted my daughter her wish! Here we are all sitting together in her house at one big happy holiday table this year. Now that was one big grown up child of divorce payback smile on the other side of the lens. LOL
If you’re navigating divorce (or know someone who is) this episode is a must-listen.
Enjoy this podcast of our live conversation on The Debbie Nigro Show with Jill Spielberg. Jill’s an award-winning attorney who focuses on high-net-worth divorces, high-conflict custody cases, and prenuptial agreements. If you’d rather read than listen the transcript of the audio is below.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
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And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show.
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I love it, man, it’s so complicated.
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It’s so great when it’s going good, and it’s so not good when it’s not going good. My goodness. So being human, we all have been hopefully in love at least one time. If not, I hope you love yourself. Anyway, Debbie Nigro here. In the spirit of love this week, Valentine’s Day of course coming up, I’m well aware that
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love doesn’t always go as planned. I spent a lot of time in the divorce world back in my time working on a Broadway musical called The First Wives Club and I was a founding partner and I helped start a website for divorced women and it was called firstwivesworld.com and the one thing I came up with it was a phrase that I always say when I speak about divorce. Divorce is a broken dream and everybody deserves another happily ever after. But if you can avoid it in the first place, that’d be great,
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and bring it back together. But if you are going to separate, there are some things you just got to know. So you’re going to love my guest today. She knows about this sort of thing. I want to focus on social media and divorce and what not to do. Say hello to Jill Spielberg.
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She’s the partner in charge of the Family and Matrimonial Law Department at Abrams-Bensterman LLP, an award-winning attorney who focuses on high net worth divorces, high conflict custody cases and prenuptial agreements. Jill, welcome. Jill, we need you.
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We need you.
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The world needs you. I’m a divorced mom. I’m long divorced. My daughter is a mom of her own right now, but I never quite felt really good about how the whole thing rolled. You know, it was… divorce, like I said, is a broken dream and it has a long tail.
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So, I know if we can keep people from getting divorced, that would be great. But if it’s inevitable, you have some really important information. Social media didn’t exist back when I was going through it. What should I not have done if there were social media? What should people not do? Like what’s the loudest thing you want to share right out of the gate? People should get
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off of all social media when they’re going through a divorce. That’s the reality. If you can avoid it entirely, that’s the best course of action. The fact is is that posting on your social media pages while it may be a vehicle for you to get information about yourself out to people who you don’t speak to regularly. You’re also getting information about yourself out to the attorney of your soon-to-be ex or the girlfriend of your soon-to-be ex.
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And what you’re posting on social media is accessible to everybody and can tell the other side a lot about what you’re doing and not doing, as the case may be.
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Oh, boy. So shut it down completely? Is that what you’re saying?
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If that’s the best practice, to be honest. Wow. You know, you could get yourself into trouble in a divorce when it comes to social media in all sorts of ways. Obviously, if you’re embroiled in a custody battle, if you’re posting pictures of yourself, you know, drinking at night on a weekend that you’re supposed to be responsible for your child, not great. It’s going to be exhibit A.
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Exhibit A, oh my goodness. You’re bringing up an interesting point that I never thought of. Can I assume that law offices who represent divorce cases like yours have people just watching out for the social media of their clients or the opposing person in the scenario?
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Well, it wouldn’t be the law firm necessarily. I mean, I’m sure you can imagine that the litigants themselves are dying to know what their spouses are up to at this time. And they’re friends. And, you know, people are, you think a friend’s a friend and they contact you and connect with you on a social media platform, but they could be funneling information back to the
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other party.
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Oh, this is big stuff. This is really, really heavy now that we have all this information out there. Okay. Is there anything regarding social media that someone should do, maybe to use it in a positive way while going through a divorce? Anything at all?
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Well, look, when you’re going through a divorce, at least from a custody perspective, the courts and I practice in New York State, so everything I’m saying is obviously specific to New York, but the courts really look to which of the parties are most likely to support and encourage a relationship between the children and the other parent, right? So to the extent you want to be positive about the other parent, the other parent gets a new job, wins an award, does something great, then you could certainly show your willingness to support that relationship and be positive.
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But for most people going through a divorce, that’s like the last thing they want to be posting on their own social media. There’s very little positivity that social media can bring, which is why our advice is always to sort of take a hiatus. I mean, the thing is, setting aside for a moment what they might be able to use against you, you know, your children are going to have access to this.
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So anything negative, anything disparaging, anything that you post with respect to an ongoing divorce proceeding is something that your children can have access to at some point if they don’t already.
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Okay, let’s talk about the kids for a second. Do you encourage your children to stop being on social media? I don’t know how that would work.
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No, absolutely not. I mean, the children can continue, but you want to limit their exposure to anything that they can see with respect to the ongoing divorce proceedings. You know, we have, I have a client who once posted, you know, I’m finally gonna be divorced
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from my horrible ex, I can’t wait to throw a divorce party. Does anybody have any ideas of what I, what, why, right? Why, why, why? So those are the types of things. And then, you know, other people like to post about their lavish vacations.
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Well, if you’re taking the position in the courtroom on a Monday, they don’t have enough money to pay child support or spousal support. And then on Saturday, you post a picture of yourself on a private jet over to Europe. You know, it’s not going to help you. No good. You know, it’s best to stay off.
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I’m not sure that there’s all that much positivity that comes from. So we’re in a we’re in a love season here.
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I know that January was officially divorce month. We’ll speak to that in a second, but now I just want to focus on this week. It’s Valentine’s week and everywhere you turn in a store, there’s got hearts and candy and cards and everything. It can’t feel good to be going through a divorce during this time. And what percentage of people, from your experience, are feeling the need to divorce before Valentine’s
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Day, by Valentine’s Day, not to deal with Valentine’s Day?
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Yeah, well, we get a lot, as you said, January is divorce month and we do get a surge of inquiries and people starting actions in January, mostly because oftentimes they want to sort of get through the holidays. If they’re family people, they want to be able to be with their children and not ruin that somewhat, for some people, magical time of the year. So then they make either a New Year’s resolution or they resolve to, you know, hit the ground running in the next year with a clean slate. So we do see a big rise in interest in divorces in January. And, you know, we do know that the divorce rate exceeds half of people who are married at this
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point, and it goes up from there for second marriages. So it’s not looking so great, but we’re also seeing a huge rise in interest in prenups, so people are at least being more responsible and preparing themselves for the worst. So I guess that’s a positive trend at this point.
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You know, of all the things we’ve talked about and that get talked about during divorce, the one that just sits, you know, in my heart that I know is the hard part is really the kids. You know, kids should not have to be choosing between parents and that’s really what happens when a divorce occurs whether they like it or not and that’s the thing I never quite made peace with with myself in my divorce and my daughter as
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many kids will feel of divorce was always torn you know between you know what you know holidays and things it just it puts them in an awkward position So, is there any advice to parents who are going to be getting divorced as to what to say to their children to do the best they can for them?
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Absolutely.
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I will tell you that I am also a child of divorce, an only child of divorce, so I was put in the middle just like everybody else. And what I always say to my clients who come in, and invariably 10 out of 10 who have children come in and they are concerned how I want to make sure that my child’s going to be okay. You know, how can they be the most well adjusted through this process? And the answer is to, if you can sort of bite your tongue and hold your breath, even if
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it makes you sick to your stomach, if you can encourage your child to have a healthy and loving relationship with the child’s other parent and not make that child feel guilty for wanting to spend time with the other parent, for feeling comfortable with the other parent, for liking the other parent’s new significant other, as hard as it all may be, that’s the key to having healthy, well-adjusted children through a divorce.
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Great. Well said. Well said.
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Well said. And I’ve seen it many times. Those are the kids that come through. The party lines are more people to love you, more presents at the holidays, more rooms to decorate, more of good things. Obviously, we wish that we could remain an intact family. That’s not going to be our future. We still respect each other and love each other as parents. We’re going to make you laugh.
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I have to share a visual of this year’s holiday in my life and you’ll appreciate it. My daughter was the only child of a divorce, so you were too. When she was a kid, she would be so mad having to choose the holidays. She goes, when I grow up, I’m going to get my own house and everybody’s coming to my house, so I don’t have to choose. The picture I actually posted on social media, I should show it to you.
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This year was me, my significant other, her dad, who I was married to, with his current wife, but there was a wife in between who was the stepmother while I was… We were all there sitting around the table, getting along just great. This is fast forward many, many years. My daughter was just like, this is the way it’s supposed to be. I knew this was the payback.
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This is the payback. It was just great. But everybody thought, wow, how civil. Yes, how civil. It’s a wonderful thing.
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You did your daughter a service, for sure. And it’s not always possible right away, right? And it’s certainly the exception. Oh, no, it’s a really
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But I’m saying if we all laughed and smiled because you know people are people humans are humans times change people change life goes on and It was we all actually really like each other. So that was kind of Exceptionally civil but to everybody listening who may have a family member who’s either gone, I mean this is hard for parents to see their kids get divorced, right, the grandparents are just losing it, and then there’s all kinds of dynamics of who’s helping with their children, who’s babysitting, and it’s a lot. Is there any advice about how not to get divorced?
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I mean I know you’d lose business, but do you have any advice?
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Well, you know, by the time they come to me, any advice I could have given is meaningless anyway. Yes, my advice is always invariably to focus on appreciation in your relationship. People ask me all the time, what causes divorce? Is it infidelity? Is it fights about money?
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What’s the biggest cause of divorce? And I always say to them, it’s the lack of appreciation for your spouse. And the lack of appreciation, that’s what causes somebody to have an extramarital relationship It’s a lack of appreciation that causes somebody to be frustrated about the finances of the family So I think that that’s really the root so to the best of everybody’s ability
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Every time you’re frustrated if you can try instead to focus on something you really appreciate and what you might miss If your relationship were to fall apart, I think that’s the best key to avoiding divorce altogether. That’s great advice
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I like that than done. Yeah, I know that. I think that appreciation is great. Feeling like somebody is paying attention to you and appreciates the efforts you’re making. In my opinion, and I’ve seen a lot of relationships in my day, you know, from an aerial view and from a professional view and from a real-life view, when you choose somebody in a relationship, I think, this is my opinion, that you’ve got to hope for 80-20, meaning that 80% of the things about them are things that you really like and the 20% that you like
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You have to tolerate in a some kind of way. Can anybody get a hundred percent in a relationship?
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Look, I think that the most important look everybody comes to a relationship with baggage whether it’s their first relationship or their tenth There’s family baggage baggage from your childhood. Whatever it is. I think the trick is picking somebody whose baggage you can handle. And so that’s how you get close to 100%. It’s the most about a person that you can deal with. If you can deal with most of their quirks, then you’re off to a good start.
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I love it. You’re a terrific guest, Jill Spielberg, partner in charge of the Family and Matrimonial Law Department at Abrams-Bensterman, LLP, and they’re in White Plains, New York. The information is up on my Debbie Nigro Show Facebook page. Great having you, Jill.
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Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.
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Yeah, I enjoyed having you, and thanks for the insight. It’s always welcome. What not to do on social media, especially if you’re in the middle of a divorce, which is pretty much don’t post anything. That was the takeaway today from Jill.
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Have a great day. I’ll be back in just a moment here on the Debbie Nigro show.
