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Filing For Divorce On Social Media Seems To Be Wave Of Future

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — We shop online. We date online. We go to school without leaving home. Now, you can file for divorce online, using social media like Facebook and Twitter.

In 2015, a New York woman became the first person to legally file for divorce using Facebook.

Court records show a judge let her "message" her husband with digital divorce documents after he refused to meet with her, and a private eye couldn't find him.

Not one person CBS2/KCAL9's Laurie Perez spoke with thought the most intimate of commitments should end online.

"It's a relationship between two people. It's not a relationship between one person and someone that you Skype with or read about on a computer," Lang Fahler of Woodland Hills said.

Carolyn wellington agreed. "Social media is just an outlet. It's not real life," she said.

Attorney Peter Walzer uses creative ways to track hard-to-find spouses. "We deliver flowers to somebody, and it's not really flowers; it's: 'here's your divorce paper,'" he said.

Walzer believed digital divorce is the "wave of the future." He said "that's how people are communicating now. That's what they want, so to say we can't use this method of service is disingenuous."

The attorney said even in the legal system, the line between reality and virtual reality is getting blurrier.

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