Episode 9 | Protecting Digital Privacy During Divorce

Listen Now

Listen On

Episode Notes

In this episode of the Buried in Work podcast, host Adam Zuckerman sits down with Jonathan Steele, a family law attorney and cybersecurity expert. Jonathan shares his unique perspective on the intersection of high-stakes divorces and the critical role that cybersecurity plays in protecting personal digital assets. Together, they explore the hidden vulnerabilities that arise during divorce proceedings and discuss how estate planning is often impacted by the dissolution of marriage. Jonathan also offers tips on safeguarding digital privacy before and during a divorce, ensuring that sensitive information stays secure.

Key Topics:

• The importance of digital privacy in divorce proceedings
• How estate planning documents should be updated after a divorce
• Protecting digital assets such as social media, email, and private data
• The intersection of estate law and family law in complex divorces
• Managing inherited property and prenuptial agreements in estate planning

Whether you're facing a family law issue, planning for the future, or simply interested in safeguarding your digital life, this episode provides expert advice to help you navigate these complex topics.

Learn More about Family Law and Cybersecurity: www.steelefamlaw.com

About Jonathan Angelyn Frazer-Giles

Jonathan D. Steele is a seasoned family law attorney renowned for his robust approach in managing sensitive family law matters such as divorce, child custody, and paternity.

His practice is characterized by a holistic approach that safeguards both personal and digital aspects of his clients’ lives. Jonathan D. Steele’s legal career began with foundational roles at Nadler, Pritikin & Mirabelli LLC, progressing to more advanced practice at Beermann LLP. His exemplary performance quickly elevated him from associate attorney to partner upon his admission to the Illinois Bar, marking his rapid rise and distinction in the legal community.

Recognized for his profound expertise in family law, Jonathan’s skills have earned him continuous recognition from Illinois Super Lawyers magazine as a Rising Star—an accolade reserved for less than 2.5% of attorneys under 40 in the state, acknowledging outstanding lawyers who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. Furthermore, he has been designated an Emerging Lawyer by Leading Lawyers magazine, a selective honor given to fewer than 2% of Illinois attorneys each year, which recognizes only those lawyers who are identified by their peers as the top lawyers in Illinois.

He has also been recognized as one of the top 10 lawyers under 40 by the American Institute of Family Law Attorneys and one of the top 10 family law attorneys under 40 by the National Academy of Family Law Attorneys.

Beyond his courtroom accomplishments, Jonathan exhibits a commanding knowledge of the Illinois Supreme Court rules, the Rules of Civil Procedure, and a technical proficiency in legal practice that makes him exceptionally well-suited for managing complex legal challenges. His expertise includes advanced trial advocacy, an in-depth understanding of the rules of evidence, and specialized knowledge in the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, Domestic Violence Act, and the Stalking No Contact Order Act. Jonathan prioritizes the privacy and security of his clients, integrating cutting-edge digital protection strategies to safeguard sensitive information—a vital asset in today’s interconnected world.

Transitioning from law to cybersecurity, Jonathan has spent years researching all aspects of cybersecurity and privacy. He has earned the CompTIA Security+ certification, confirming his advanced skills in handling complex security issues. At Steele Fortress, he leverages his unique blend of legal and cybersecurity expertise to provide comprehensive consulting services, ensuring clients can navigate the complex landscape of cybersecurity laws and regulations.

Outside the courtroom, Jonathan is dedicated to community service, providing pro bono legal aid through JUF Community Legal Services and contributing to medical research initiatives as a board member of the Medical Research Junior Board Foundation at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Transcript

Buried in Work Host 00:00

This is the Buried in Work podcast, where we share tips and interview experts to help you simplify estate planning and end of life tasks.

Adam Zuckerman 00:09

I'm your host, Adam Zuckerman. And today we have a very special guest, Jonathan Steele. Jonathan is a family law attorney specializing in high stakes divorces and the founder of Steel Fortress, which is the cybersecurity and privacy business. His extensive experience in family law includes handling complex cases, including marriage, dissolution, child custody, and business interests. His unique expertise in cybersecurity allows him to protect his clients digital privacy and security during vulnerable times such as divorce and custody battles. Today we're going to have a great conversation with, with him, and we'll, we'll see where things go. But with that, Jonathan, it's great to have you here.

Jonathan Steele [00:44]

Adam, thanks for having me. That was quite the intro, so I appreciate that.

Adam Zuckerman 00:48

Hey, you can hire me to do your pr. Let's start a little while ago. So talk about your journey into family law and what inspired you to also specialize in cybersecurity. Because those are two fields that are oftentimes not linked directly.

Jonathan Steele 01:01

I think they're pretty far apart, actually. You know, I started as a law clerk when I was in high school, and I clerked for a divorce lawyer in Chicago and clerked for him all throughout high school, child labor laws be damned. And then I continued on through college during the summers and all throughout law school, and then just sort of fell into divorce law because I wrote along with him. Recently is when I've gotten into the cybersecurity and privacy space. I've always sort of been a privacy geek. I've liked the apps, signal, proton mail, things like that that are a little more privacy friendly. And given the slowdown, I would say of work, or at least court work during COVID I had some free time until courts pivoted and I figured out how to get on Zoom. And rather than using that time to watch Tiger King and learn how to bake bread, I used it to go down a deep, dark rabbit hole that I have yet to find the bottom of, where I've watched all sorts of YouTube recordings and podcasts, and I did a fair amount of reading about the subjects of security and privacy in general. And then I sort of did more formal education, got some certification for cybersecurity, and now it's related to my practice.

There's definitely overlap because people come in at the infancy stage of a divorce, and they're pretty convinced that, right or wrong, that their spouse has access to their data, to their devices, and they look to me to be able to guide them on unplugging that access, buttoning up their privacy settings on their social media, ensuring that their devices are free of spyware and just generally giving them the ability to sleep at night, knowing their spouse is not reading all their messages, reading their emails, being able to access their photos and things like that.

Adam Zuckerman 03:00

Typically, where in the process does that come into play? Most people don't realize that securing your information during a divorce proceeding is extremely important. When do they come to you and how do you actually go through that process?

Jonathan Steele 03:13

It usually comes out when it's too late. You know, the other side will start building their case very early on and they'll be mounting evidence by way of all of your social media posts. And you'll find out when they have to tender their discovery or their exhibits for trial, and then it's too late to do anything about it. And, you know, there are times when, you know, you're fighting over custody or parenting time and you see that while you had parenting time, you were out at bars. And they know that because you're posting pictures and you were, you know, basically time stamping them. Or you'll be somebody that's a maintenance candidate or alimony candidate. You'll be seeking maintenance at trial, and the other side will come out with pictures showing you dating during the divorce or vacationing during the divorce with a boyfriend.

And that's pretty damning evidence that you're cohabitating during the case and you may lose your right to maintenance because of that. So people don't really know. And it's a hard sell as a lawyer to convince a client. Either get off of social media while your case is pending, or at least try to prune your followers and friend listen so that you can ensure that the people that are following you and that have access to your account aren't feeding that information to your spouse.

Adam Zuckerman 04:25

So the process plays out. Divorce is in the works. It's finally finalized. How does divorce impact someone's estate plan? And what immediate steps should someone take to update their documents during or after a divorce?

Jonathan Steele 04:39

Yeah, it changes everything for the most part. You know, there are certain steps you can't do during a divorce. You know, you can't change a whole lot of trusts, you can't change a whole lot of wills. You can do certain modifications to certain forms of life insurance, and pretty much anything major that you're trying to do during the divorce, you can be assured is going to result in a motion being filed asking you to undo what you've tried to change, but, you know, sometimes your spouse will try to run the clock on you, depending on how old you are.

I've had some elderly clients where they drag the divorce so that they can inherit from the estate as opposed to getting what they would be entitled to under the divorce. And, you know, whether or not you have a prenup coming into your marriage plays a heavy role in what the estate entitlement is, whether or not you've waived your right to renounce your will. All of that plays into the divorce case pretty heavily. Post divorce, it matters a little bit less, but it definitely plays into how the divorce shakes out.

Adam Zuckerman 05:42

So let's say that the divorce goes through. Talk about some of the specific changes that people do need to make to their wills or trusts. What are those considerations once you're divorced?

Jonathan Steele 05:51

Well, it depends what your will and trust said going into your divorce. If you had your spouse inheriting from you, certainly you're going to want to change that once you're divorced. And the same is true for your trusts. Sometimes your divorce decree may spell out certain entitlements to your trust, and then you won't be able to change them. Or certain kinds of trusts, like a child support trust, may end up getting established during the divorce case to fund child support obligations.

But for the most part, unless your divorce decree tells you what to do with your will and your trust, you're pretty much free to do with it whatever you want, which is going to entail changing the beneficiaries to someone other than your spouse.

Adam Zuckerman 06:32

Let's talk about the beneficiary designations a little bit. Why are those important?

Jonathan Steele 06:36

Well, during the divorce case, certainly, you know, if you were to die before your divorce is finalized, you're still married. And so whatever you had in your will or your trust is going to be effectuated as though you weren't in the middle of a divorce case. And then if you get divorced and you don't change your beneficiaries, you know, maybe you slept on it, maybe you didn't think of doing it. Your ex wife or your ex husband may continue to inherit as set forth in your trust had you not changed it.

Adam Zuckerman 07:04

Right. So switching over a little bit, you have a will, minors are involved, children. How can divorce influence the decisions regarding guardianship of minor children or dependents after divorce? So what needs to be considered in that circumstance?

Jonathan Steele 07:20

Well, your divorce decree or your allocation judgment is going to spell out basically who has decision making, who has parenting time. It's going to spell out all your rights and obligations related to the child. And then, you know, that's going to be your operative document. That's going to be what you have to run up against. If there is a guardianship proceeding or somebody wants to take custody other than one of the parents, they're going to have to overcome the allocation judgment.

But that's the document that's going to lay out who has basically, who has rights to the child and decision making for the child. And obviously, under US Supreme Court precedent, the parents have that fundamental interest in the raising of their child and the decision making for their child. So for anybody else to come in and try to usurp that, they got a pretty high burden.

Adam Zuckerman 08:10

Okay. There's obviously a lot that goes into a court's judgment as they review individual cases. What role does estate planning play in the process as it relates to division of assets? Can it make things simpler? Can it complicate? Complicate things. What should people know?

Jonathan Steele 08:25

One of the carve outs for whether or not property ends up being marital or non marital can be whether or not you did something solely for estate planning purposes. And what I mean by that is if you have non marital property and you designate your spouse as a beneficiary, the spouse may claim during the divorce case that that's marital property, that you made a gift to the marriage by virtue of your voluntary act of designating your spouse as a beneficiary. The counter to that argument is if you can establish that you did it solely for estate planning purposes, you will retain that interest as your non marital property.

So in that situation, it becomes pretty important, basically, your intent, whether you had a donative intent, whether or not you intended to make a gift to the marriage, or whether or not you were doing it for, as I mentioned, estate planning purposes. So it certainly plays into account there. And then various life insurance policies, whether or not they're revocable or irrevocable. Some can be changed during the divorce case, some can't be changed during the divorce case. So there's a number of nuances there. But I'd say that the most prevalent impact that it's going to have is on that marital versus non marital designation.

Adam Zuckerman 09:39

What about inherited property? So does that have a special classification or treatment?

Jonathan Steele 09:44

Yeah. So the general rule that you operate under is that property that's acquired during the marriage, it carries the presumption of being marital property. You can rebut that presumption a number of different ways, one of which is, as I mentioned, showing that you did it for estate planning purposes. One of which is acquisition to funds that you had before you got married. And so inherited property, even if it's acquired during the marriage, is that another one of those buckets of. Yes, but so it is. While you did acquire the interest during the marriage, and you're butt up against that presumption of marital property if you can show that it was inherited inheritance, it's your non marital property.

Adam Zuckerman 10:23

What about for blended families? So are there special considerations as it relates to estate planning for individuals who remarry after divorce?

Jonathan Steele 10:31

You know, you have no financial obligations towards a child that's not yours unless you choose to adopt the child. And so it's mostly separated. There are certain circumstances where if the new spouse is lessening the load of the parent from the prior relationship, the extent of them lessening the load, or the extent of their financial contributions can be taken into account for setting support for the other child. But for the most part, it is pretty separate. But the circumstances where you have blended families, a prenuptial agreement is a good way of keeping a separation in a clean and orderly way.

Adam Zuckerman 11:11

Okay. At the beginning of the conversation, we talked about your expertise locking down digital assets and people's digital Persona. If you have advice for people before they were to enter a divorce, just general knowledge. Even if they are in a happy marriage where nothing is on the horizon, how should they be considering their digital assets and their digital legacy?

Jonathan Steele 11:32

It's too late. Usually when it comes to your attention that something needs to change. And people usually decide after they've been hacked or after their information has been leaked, or they've been the victim of a data breach. And at that point, it's too late. At that point, your information's out there. Sort of like when you post a picture to the Internet, you can pretty much assume you can't get it back. And so buttoning that up, securing yourself in advance, is about as good of advice as you can be given. And there's.

There's a number of different ways to do it depending on what your digital footprint is going into it. You know, if you are one of these people that have an Instagram page and a Facebook and a LinkedIn and every social media imaginable, there are certain things you can do as far as, like, your privacy settings and making sure that your account is private and that you're actually keeping track of who your followers are, and then just hardening your device settings, your location settings on your, you know, your phone, and keeping tabs on that. It's just. It's good cyber hygiene. To do, even in a happily married situation. And if you maintain those same privacy practices and security practices going into a divorce, you're definitely in a better position as the case plays out.

Adam Zuckerman 12:43

Okay, for someone that's going through a family law issue for the first time, what tips can you offer them to help them navigate the legal system and advocate for themselves effectively?

Jonathan Steele [12:52]

There's a few. One is to figure out, work it out with your attorney, what their best or their preferred method of communication is, because that's pivotal. Being able to communicate with your attorney effectively is very important. And if you're missing each other because you're just communicating in different ways, you know, maybe you're sending three four page emails and your lawyer is old school and they prefer phone calls or in person conferences, you're just not communicating effectively. And so some attention needs to be paid to that so that you're on the same page, so to speak. As far as how you're communicating, I think it's also important to how you choose your attorney.

A lot of people choose cost first, experience second, and that's not always the best approach. Sometimes people get scared off with some sticker shock. This lawyer is charging me 400 an hour, and I just met with someone. They're charging 200 an hour. Better off with the 200 an hour. And you know, what they don't take into account there is that maybe the $200 an hour lawyer takes two times as long to do the same work. Or maybe that $200 an hour lawyer messes up something that you then go to the $400 an hour lawyer to clean up, and then you're paying twice. So, you know, to the extent possible, hire the best lawyer you can afford. It's going to make the process easier.

And then I think anything you can do to expedite the process, such as, you know, just organizing the documents that are going to be required of you in the process, you know, you're for sure going to need your last couple years tax returns, probably your last couple years bank statements, credit card statements, things like that. And if you can compile those and organize them and send them to your attorney in a way that a is secure, then I'm going to stress that part, given my focus on cyber security, but also just doing it in a way that's proactive because you're going to get hit with discovery requests. And then, you know, if you're giving it in dribs and drabs, then you're fighting over discovery and the costs are just going up and up.

And so if you can just front that issue knowing it's coming. You're going to streamline the process, make it much less expensive.

Adam Zuckerman 14:58

What are some of the considerations that listeners might not be familiar with between low value estate divorces and some of the specialties that you focus on with high net worth families?

Jonathan Steele 15:09

You know, there's similar issues but different stakes. You know, the tasks for a lawyer are the same. You have to identify the assets, you have to value the assets, and then you have to distribute the assets. Some of the higher stakes situations, the valuation of the assets can become more complicated. If you have closely held corporations or claims of non marital property or non marital components of a business, that can complicate the valuation.

If you have someone that's running their own business and they are trying to keep money in the business and artificially lower their income for divorce planning purposes, that can complicate matters. And, you know, issues like that, issues surrounding non marital tracing, those primarily find their way into the higher stakes divorces, whereas the. I don't want to call them lesser stakes, but just the more straightforward divorces where you have two w, two wage earners and a couple retirement accounts and bank accounts to divide, those generally tend to just be easier. They tend to be faster and less expensive to make their way through.

Adam Zuckerman 16:17

What are non marital tracing?

Jonathan Steele 16:19

Yeah. So, for instance, if you were to come into your marriage with prior to your marriage, you owned a home, and during your marriage, you sold that home and you bought a new home. As I mentioned earlier, you're going to be butting up against the presumption that that new home is marital property because you acquired it during the marriage. But if you can trace the down payment, if you can trace the funds to a prior home or money that you had prior to your marriage, that second home is still your non marital property. And so you have to be able to trace it from start to finish. You have to do that by clear and convincing evidence. And just saying that was from my prior home oftentimes isn't going to be enough.

You need to show the closing statements, you need to show the wire transfer from one to the acquisition of the new asset. And that's that. Generally speaking, that's how the tracing works. You're trying to show, yes, I acquired this during the marriage, but I'm tracing it to either an asset or, well, I guess both. Whether it's money or property that I had prior to our marriage.

Adam Zuckerman 17:22 It almost sounds like there's a fair amount of similarity between the roles of a state executor or administer and the divorce attorney in a way that they need to marshal the assets, understand the liabilities, and then distribute the assets properly. Do you think that there are parallels there that are somewhat surprising for a lot of people?

Jonathan Steele 17:42

It almost seems like the administrator is more in the role of the judge there, because that's sort of the judge's task, too, is to compile a balance sheet with the assistant of the attorneys, obviously, but then distribute them either in the case of a divorce according to statute, or in the case of a will or trust according to the terms of the will or trust. So there certainly is a similarity there.

Adam Zuckerman 18:05

All right, well, there's certainly a lot to unpack. Jonathan, final takeaways. What do you hope listeners will walk away from your insights on family law, digital privacy, cybersecurity, estate planning today?

Jonathan Steele 18:15

Now is the time. You know, as I mentioned earlier, once you have been hacked, once you've been leaked, once you're ahead on the eve of trial in your divorce case and your exhibits are being tendered, it's too late to try to undo the harm. And so you really just need to be mindful of what you're sharing, whether that's photos that may have metadata attached to them, whether that's posts about your spouse or your kids. Just try to be mindful of your digital footprint because it's very hard to get it back once it's out there.

Adam Zuckerman 18:47

All right, Jonathan, thank you so much. If people want to get a hold of you or reach out for a conversation, where can they find you?

Jonathan Steele 18:53

I have a website, steelfamlaw.com dot. It has all my contact information, all my social media information, and you can reach me there.

Adam Zuckerman 19:01

All right, Jonathan, thank you so much for your time. We enjoyed the conversation. That wraps up another buried in work podcast episode where we feature tips and stories from industry professionals who specialize in making estate planning, end of life tasks, and estate transitions more manageable. If you enjoyed the podcast, consider leaving a review, follow us on social media or go to the website. And don't forget to get podcast listeners can save 10% off our state preparation package and our games with the code. BIWPODCAST

Jonathan, thanks again. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Jonathan Steele 19:28

Thank you.

Buried in Work Host 19:29

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Buried in Work podcast. Remember, you can save 10% on our estate preparation package and games with Code PODCAST10 at buriedinwork.com.

Other Buried in Work Podcast Episodes