Legal Question in Family Law in Virginia

Re: can spouses legally read each others e-mail

Is it legal, you ask, for one spouse to read another's email? I know of no law prohibiting such practice, nor, for that matter, one that would prohibit the reading of one spouse's "snail mail" by the other.

As to your second query, if you mean whether the email itself could be used as evidence in a divorce action, the answer would depend(naturally) upon a variety of factors, not the least of which would include the consideration as to whether there had been a proper evidentiary basis laid down, i.e., a foundation, for the admission of this material into evidence which the court could then consider in making decisions concerning the divorce matter itself.

Re: can spouses legally read each others e-mail

There is no law I know of that makes it a crime to READ someone else's e-mail. There are laws about computer hacking or stealing someone's code but even the privacy laws are not specific. If someone gets your password and looks at your mail I don't think it's a crime. This is true whether the person is your spouse or not. There are no laws exempting spouses from privacy laws (such as US mail).

Good luck.