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Platonic Love on a chat: evidence cannot be brought to trial to prove the cheating relationship.

Imagine that your wife or husband finds a chat of you with an unknown person, entertained through a social network. Between you and your virtual “friend” there has never been any physical contact, you have never seen each other, never kissed: in short, you have not had any kind of physical interaction with him. But the chat is unequivocal: the tenor of the messages, the emojis with hearts and smiles in love, the compliments, everything suggests an involvement, if not physical, at least emotional. In short, a real visual attraction. Well, is such a virtual relationship on social media considered cheating?

According to jurisprudence, a platonic relationship – that is, one that takes the form of a dense exchange of “explicit” messages or e-mails, albeit at a distance, with a person with whom a sexual relationship has never been consummated, is equally to be considered infidelity marital.

Basically, in order to speak of adultery, a mental involvement (be it sentimental or just passionate) is sufficient, even without physical contact. This is in fact what damages the trust of the other spouse and therefore makes coexistence intolerable.

All of this clearly – we say this at the cost of appearing a little discontented – does not mean that you cannot have virtual friendships even if they are of the opposite sex. These are permitted by law, nor could the principle of equality enshrined in the Constitution be otherwise expected. And, as the Latins said, “everything is pure for the pure”. Therefore, those who act with good intentions, without ulterior motives, certainly cannot define themselves as a “traitor”, a cheater. But the mere fact that the chat is kept hidden gives rise to a well-founded suspicion that, behind it, there may be something more than a simple virtual knowledge such as, for example, the intention – in the more or less near future. – to have physical contact. 

However, it must be said that, to determine when the relationship on social networks is betrayal, a case-by-case analysis must be carried out to assess whether, from the tenor of the words, one can guess the existence of an attraction.

But what can be the consequences of finding a relationship on a chat? The penalty is that of the so-called charge. In practice, the unfaithful spouse cannot, in the event of separation and divorce, claim either the maintenance allowance or the inheritance rights against the former spouse.

Cheating via social networks and evidences

There is one last but not least important clarification to make. In order to prove the chat relationship, the betrayed spouse should bring the evidence to the judge. And these certainly could not consist of screenshots acquired against the will of the social account holder, given that any access to another computer system constitutes a crime. And evidence acquired in violation of the law cannot have value in a trial. So, paradoxically, the betrayed spouse would have few weapons to prove infidelity, unless the same is the subject of confession by the other or does not happen under the eyes of any witnesses who can declare what has been seen before the judge. These are therefore quite rare hypotheses.

Result: even if the betrayal via chat can remain “unpunished”, in the sense that – since it is difficult to prove – it cannot be ascertained, it will still entail the right for a spouse to ask for separation. And above all, this is a setback for the marriage.