The phones at law firms across the country are ringing steadily with the recent news of the casual encounter website breach that left millions of email addresses exposed to public view. Many of these callers are scorned partners wanting to get divorce proceedings underway, while other calls come from concerned spouses who know their personal information has been violated, fear the worst, and want to know what awaits them in the future should their partner file for divorce.

If your email address was among the information compromised by the infidelity website breach, here's how you can expect your infidelity to come into play in the event of divorce.

Child Custody

No matter what state you live in, child custody and visitation will be determined by what is in the best interest of your children. The concept of how to conclude what is in your children's best interest, however, varies by state. Some of the things you can expect to be taken into consideration are the long-term health and safety of your children, the financial stability of each parent, the health of both you and your spouse, and the emotional ties your children have formed with each parent.

Most U.S. states are no-fault states, meaning it doesn't matter what factors caused the want for divorce. Although your participation on the infidelity website may have led to your divorce, it bears no weight in determining child custody unless it had a direct negative impact on your child. 

Division Of Property And Assets 

During a divorce, the court seeks to divide properly fairly between each party. If your participation on the casual encounter website and/or affair didn't result in frivolous spending, then it likely won't have any play during the division of property and assets. 

If you spent a significant amount of money on your extramarital encounters, though, it's considered marital waste, and your spouse might be entitled to a share of property and assets large enough to make up for that spending.

What type of spending constitutes marital waste? Most states consider marital waste to mean any spending that took place in the time leading up to the dissolve of your marriage that didn't benefit the household you shared with your spouse. In short, the cost of your participation on the website, any money you spent dining at restaurants or lodging at hotels in an effort to accommodate an affair, and any gifts you purchased for somebody from the website with whom you were romantically involved all may be considered marital waste.

Do not attempt to prevent your spouse and their lawyer from discovering marital waste spending by destroying receipts or billing statements. In some states, whether or not you attempted to hide your spending helps validate that it was indeed marital waste. Furthermore, the destruction of these things can be viewed as the "hiding of assets" by the court system; hiding assets is punishable by the ruling of alimony payments, forfeiture of property, and in some cases jail time.

Instead, work with a divorce lawyer to build a case defending your spending. It may be that your financial situation was stable enough to allow both you and your spouse individual spending money. If this is the case, your spouse may have spent an equal amount of marital waste, thus negating their claim to a larger portion of property or assets.

It's unfortunate that a casual encounter website failed to protect your confidentiality and now you must deal with the consequences. However, if you're expecting your spouse to file for divorce, you need to be prepared. Contact a divorce lawyer today, such as those at sites like http://www.kamesquire-com.webs.com, and start building a case to protect your child custody rights and your portion of the property and assets you currently share with your spouse.