When taking the first steps toward getting a divorce, it’s important to reorient your sense of privacy. In a close marriage, sharing bank accounts and all sorts of personal passwords can be an expression of intimacy. But when the relationship starts to go bad, sharing too much personal information can become a problem.
Changing your conception of privacy doesn’t only apply to passwords for bank accounts and other financial holdings that will be involved in dividing property. It applies across the board to all sorts of areas where you and your spouse had access to information about each other.
E-mail passwords and social media privacy settings are obvious examples.
If your spouse knows your gmail or hotmail password, make sure to change it. The same goes for Facebook and other social sites.
In fact, on Facebook, you may want to also be sure that you adjust your privacy settings so that your former spouse, or soon-to-be former spouse, doesn’t get access to too much sensitive information about your new life.
Indeed, this whole exercise of being more sensitive to personal information involves changing your privacy settings, both literally and figuratively.
This is as true is a big metro area like Atlanta as it is in any small town in Georgia. To really launch your new life, and protect yourself from old problems, you’ve got to be more careful with your privacy, both online and off.
Don’t forget snail mail, either, in your hurry to change electronic passwords and settings. If you are expecting sensitive mail at an address you share with your future ex, getting a post office box may be in order.
Source: “Divorce: Keeping Your New Life Private,” Huffington Post, Brendan Lyle, 6-1-12
