Disclaimer: The tips below reflect the law as of the date this article was published. The law on artificial intelligence is changing quickly, and courts are still working out the rules. This article is general information, not legal advice. Please talk to an attorney about your specific situation.
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at why your conversations with AI tools may not be private, why AI cannot replace a skilled family lawyer, and why AI will tend to tell you what you want to hear. This second part covers a few more pitfalls before closing with the ways AI can actually help your case when it is used well.
Your AI Search History Could Be Accessed By Your Family Members
AI tools live inside your accounts, and accounts in a marriage are often more shared than people realize. Your chat history may sync to a tablet the children use, to a shared desktop, or to a family iPad still logged into your account. If your spouse has your password, or has ever had it, assume they can read the conversations. The same goes for a work laptop, where your employer usually has the right to look, and where your reasonable expectation of privacy is thin.
A few minutes of housekeeping is worth it. Change your passwords and turn on two-factor authentication. Check which devices are logged into your accounts and remove the ones you do not control. Review your AI tool’s privacy settings for chat history and model training.
Be Skeptical of AI Numbers
People often arrive at a first meeting with a number in hand. AI has told them that their spousal support should be a specific figure for a specific number of years, or that child support will be a certain amount per month. Those numbers are frequently wrong, and the wrong number is worse than no number, because it sets an expectation you then have to be talked out of.
Ohio child support is calculated from a statutory worksheet with defined inputs, and small details change the result, including health insurance costs, parenting time, other children, and how self-employment income is characterized. Spousal support in Ohio is not formula-driven at all. It rests on a list of statutory factors that a court weighs with considerable discretion, and practice wildly varies from one county to another.
If You Are Representing Yourself, Verify Everything
Some people handle their own divorce, and AI has made that feel more achievable. Be careful. AI tools can invent case citations that look completely real, with plausible names, courts, and dates, for cases that do not exist. Attorneys across the country have been sanctioned for trusting AI when they should not have. A self-represented party is held to the same standard.
Never cite a case you have not read yourself. Check your court’s local rules on whether AI use must be disclosed. And do not let AI talk you into filing a motion because it sounds impressive. Motions cost money, and baseless ones burn goodwill with the court.
Your Children Are Using AI Too
Children and teenagers use AI companions and chatbots, sometimes as a place to process what is happening in their family. If your children are doing that, it is usually a sign they need someone to talk to, and a counselor is a far better option than an app that will simply agree with them.
Used Well, AI Can Save You Money
None of this means AI has no place in a family law case or that you have to swear off those tools entirely. Lawyers bill for time, and a surprising amount of that time goes to reconstructing basic facts, chasing down documents, and explaining terminology.
Ask AI to help you build a neutral timeline of your marriage. Ask it to turn your scattered concerns into an organized list of questions for your first meeting. Ask it for a general checklist of the documents a divorce usually requires, such as pay stubs, tax returns, retirement statements, mortgage documents, and credit card statements. Ask it to explain what terms like discovery, temporary orders, guardian ad litem, or qualified domestic relations order actually mean.
But keep your legal strategy, your attorney’s work product, and anything you would not want your spouse to read out of it entirely.
Additionally, used properly by an attorney who knows the family law of your jurisdiction, AI can compress work that used to take hours, freeing time for the parts of your case that actually require your lawyer’s skill. AI can also strengthen your attorney’s work product and attention to detail.
Contact
If you have questions about divorce, custody, support, pre-nuptial, post-nuptial, alternative dispute resolution, or any other family law issue, reach out to Eva C. Saulnier (ECS@kjk.com) or another member of KJK Family Law by calling 216-696-8700. Bring your questions, even the ones you started with an AI tool. We will give you answers that actually apply to your situation.