Our friend Robin Epstein and her sister Amy Epstein Feldman just wrote a hilarious (not to mention helpful) book called So Sue Me, Jackass! Avoiding Legal Pitfalls That Can Come Back to Bite You at Work, at Home, and at Play. Over the past two weeks, we’ve published excerpts answering the questions “Can you get sued if you break someone’s penis during sex?” and “If you get married while drunk, does it count?” This week we’ll learn about how to keep an ex spouse from airing your dirty laundry (or airing pictures of you in your dirty laundry). Stay tuned for more excerpts in the coming weeks.
Q: Holy cow! This woman’s ex-husband posted the sickest pictures of her on Exwifepicture.com [Warning: Don’t attempt to look up this site, it’s got virus/spyware written all over it!]. Though I don’t know this woman personally (although now I sort of feel like I do), I can’t imagine she’s happy her cooter is flapping across the Net for all to see. Is there any way to stop an ex from spreading your nasty bits across the Web after spreading ’em for his camera?
A: If you type the words “I hate my ex” into a Web browser, you will come up with more than eight hundred thousand entries of people all too happy to get creative on the subject of the scumbag former love of their lives.
If an ex posts pictures or a video of you post break-up like Verne Troyer’s ex did — yeah, that’s right, Mini Me’s ex — you are well within your rights to sue the person. An investigation can be carried out where Phone Forensic Experts can examine the evidence, identify who has stolen your photo and the person who illegally posted your picture can be charged with revenge porn. And Troyer is, in fact, suing his ex-lover for $20 million for allegedly releasing snippets of a sex tape in which he and his mini meat have a starring role. But regardless of whether he wins the suit or not, those images have likely already been cached by someone with a thing for bite-sized junk. So married, dating or one-night-standing, keep in mind any time you agree to take compromising photos you may become the unwitting star of a viral peepshow, and just like herpes, that stuff can live on to haunt you.
In the case of divorces, exes will write agreements detailing the end of the relationship down to the last salad fork. Yet those rarely contain confidentiality or nondisparagement clauses. Not smart in this day and age. When writing up your final divorce papers, consider including a clause that would preclude the other from publishing nasty things about you in cyberspace where a future employer — or your own child — might them someday. And if YOU need to vent, get one of those old-fashioned diaries, say what you need to say in it — and then throw away the key.
Previous Excerpts:
So Sue Me, Jackass! is on sale everywhere now. For more information – or to ask them your own embarrassing question – check out SoSueMeJackass.com. We’ll be posting more excerpts here in the coming weeks.
