Clients in matrimonial matters frequently arrive with a phone full of screenshots and a conviction that it settles everything. Sometimes it does. Frequently it is inadmissible, irrelevant to the actual issues, or obtained in a way that damages their own position.
Start With What Is Being Decided
Most jurisdictions determine property division and support on financial grounds, and the emotional facts of a marriage may have limited bearing. What consistently matters: assets, income, cohabitation status, and anything affecting the welfare of children. Evidence that speaks to those questions is worth gathering. Evidence that only proves someone behaved badly may cost thousands and change nothing.
Evidence That Earns Its Cost
- Cohabitation. Where support obligations end or reduce on cohabitation, documented patterns of residence are directly financial evidence.
- Hidden assets and income. Undisclosed accounts, cash businesses, property held through entities or relatives, and lifestyle plainly inconsistent with declared income.
- Dissipation of marital funds. Documented spending of joint assets on a third party is directly relevant in many jurisdictions.
- Child welfare. Supervision, substance use, or exposure to unsafe situations — documented factually rather than characterised.
- Employment and capacity. Where a party claims inability to work, verified activity is decisive.
What Clients Should Not Do
Do not access your spouse's email, cloud account or phone, even if you know the password and even if the device is jointly owned. Do not install monitoring software. Do not place a tracker on a vehicle titled to them. Do not record conversations you are not part of. These acts are crimes in many jurisdictions, they can result in exclusion of the evidence and sanctions, and in a contested matter they hand the other side a weapon. Investigators are asked to do these things weekly and decline every time.
Work Through Counsel
Investigations instructed through an attorney are better investigations. Counsel defines exactly what is legally relevant, the work product may attract privilege protections, and findings arrive in a form the case can use. Clients who instruct directly and hand results to counsel afterwards frequently find they paid for the wrong thing.
The Emotional Reality
Confirmation rarely delivers the relief people expect. It replaces uncertainty with grief, which is a genuine improvement, but it is not the same as feeling better. Anyone entering this process should have a therapist alongside their attorney. Every experienced investigator says so, and the clients who listen come through it far better.
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Dan Ribacoff is a licensed private investigator and the founder of International Investigative Group, a certified polygraph examiner, certified firearms instructor, GIA Graduate Gemologist and the author of I, Spy: How to Be Your Own Private Investigator. He works from offices in New York, Boca Raton and London, and has appeared as a polygraph expert on American and British television.