Will sensitive info from divorce stay confidential?
Q: During our divorce, my wife and I were required to exchange a great deal of information, most of which was very personal or financial in nature. Now that the divorce is over, what level of privacy can we expect from our attorneys as to maintaining the confidentiality of that information or making sure there is no unauthorized release of information to others or a third party? I reviewed the agreement I signed when I hired my attorney, but that is not covered in the documentation. Can I request the information I provided be returned or destroyed now that the divorce is final?
A: Both sets of attorneys that you and your now ex-wife used are required to make certain that the information you provided to them remains confidential. This requirement exists even after your divorce is final and the case is closed.
How that is actually accomplished depends on the level of technology the law firms the two of you hired use to store their files. There are no rules that specify exactly what a law firm must do to secure its files.
Some law firms maintain highly secure offices with electronically secured and locked-off file rooms. Other law firms have transitioned to entirely paperless offices, where they scan all information and save it securely to cloud-based servers. Other law firms still keep paper files and simply lock their doors and keep all of their clients’ information in unlocked file cabinets (or storage boxes) for years or decades.
Now that your divorce is over, you can request that your attorney return your file to you and destroy all information in the file. Whether that request will work depends on how your law firm maintains
its files and how agreeable they are to doing what you have requested. The law firm you hired may be reluctant to return your entire file to you without first scanning it because they might want a record of your divorce in case issues arise in later years. They might also have no physical file to give to you or to destroy, as everything related to your case might be stored on cloud-based servers.
You probably cannot contact your ex-wife’s attorneys and request that they destroy or return your file. They almost certainly will not be interested in hearing from you. They would need to receive that request from your ex-wife, and even then, just like the law firm you hired, they might not be agreeable to (or even capable of ) returning or destroying her entire file.
And even if your ex-wife’s lawyers return their entire file to her, that means the entire record of your divorce will now be in the hands of your ex-wife. Of course, she probably already has a complete record of the proceedings, but if she receives a box full of files, she’ll then have a duplicate set of records. Where will she then store that box?
The information in this column is intended to provide a general understanding of the law, not legal advice. Ronald Lipman of the Houston law firm Lipman & Associates is board-certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Email questions to stateyourcase@lipmanpc.com.