November 10, 2009 by Connor Sullivan
In the past, all things that happened in a courtroom were to be open as public record and the information could be found out or read by anyone who wanted to see those details. This has been slowly changing over the years with special attention to high profile divorce cases. People that are famous are now requesting from their Las Vegas divorce attorney to have their court details of their divorce sealed to the public on the basis of being concerned about identity theft. A Las Vegas divorce lawyer often tries to protect the information of their famous clients to be hidden by the public for various reasons and some states support this while others don’t .
With so many celebrities having no privacy being followed by paparazzi cameras following their every move, the one aspect of their life they may wish was kept private from the rest of the world is the information of their divorce which usually has details of them personally as well as all of the financial details . Lawyers that fight this often use the First Amendment argument where the public is permitted access to all public records, even those of celebrities and why should the standards be different depending on whether the person is famous or not .
This public access to information found in divorce court records has been used by those in politics running against another politician for office . They find out the fact that the person they are running against had been arrested for hiring a prostitute and committed adultery on his wife and used that information for the public to know in a campaign regarding if that candidate is trustworthy or not. Other examples may be of campaign workers discovering that their opposition had some bad financial information about them that came out in their divorce proceedings. This also may been used in cut throat political campaigns. A lot of politicians are now asking that their divorce details be sealed from the public for just this purpose .
Another group of people that want their divorce information not to be open to the public may be large business owners who get divorced . One prime example of this was the former chairman of GE, Jack Welch. His spouse, Jane disclosed that GE gave him over 2.5 million dollars in additional unreported financial perks like a luxury Manhattan apartment and professional basketball and baseball tickets. Once this information was made public, Welch quickly settled his divorce to not have a bad image made even more public .
Some states have now made all divorce cases should be closed like the state of New York that closes all records for 100 years, no matter if you are famous or not. Other states such as California and New Hampshire have followed suit by doing it as well on a case to case situation . As with more controversial issues, there are two sides to it that feel strongly for and against it. That is why hiring a great divorce attorney in your corner is important to what you wish to receive from your divorce settlement.
Connor Sullivan has spent time with a Las Vegas divorce attorney researching an article on the subject. He hired a Las Vegas divorce lawyer to represent his brother in his recent divorce. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service
