As we launch into 2012, there are a number of media outlets looking back over the past year and bemoaning what they cite as evidence that we live in a post-privacy era. The implications of this observation are said to be playing out in all sorts of venues, including divorce courts. That's true in Pennsylvania. It's true around the world.

Facebook and other social media are widely known to be sources that divorce attorneys have started to mine to bolster their arguments during cases. The trend seems to affirm the relative value of no-fault, uncontested divorce in Pennsylvania, which can deliver, at a low-cost, a relatively stress-free dissolution because it requires both parties to agree to terms before papers are filed.

Social media can be detrimental to efforts to obtain a rational, reasonable divorce. There's not only the damage that can be done when one angry spouse goes public with comments about the other. There's also the fact that in today's open media environment, even the more traditional media are beginning to get into the act.

As evidence, look at the case of a Boston Globe web developer who tweeted about a young couple's angry row while on a visit to his local Burger King. He also took a photo of the couple and posted that. Mainstream media, including ABC News, picked up the story and spread it around.

Others in the media were rankled by the display. They acknowledged that because the fight was in a public space, the couple had effectively given up their right to privacy. But they questioned whether or not the couple should have had to worry if the apparent disintegration of their relationship was going to be unethically broadcast for the world to see.

It would be nice to think that the social environment hasn't become so open that we can't step back from the precipice of unfettered privacy invasion. In the meantime, it remains possible to retain some semblance of privacy in our divorces by use of the no-fault divorce process.

Source: MSNBC, "7 signs we're living in the post-privacy era," Helen A.S. Popkin, Jan. 4, 2012