Love Contracts- The Law, Social Media and Reputation, Social Media Pre-nups

posted by Mishty Deb on October 7,2014 in Contracts, Family law

In an era of social media (Facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat, etc.) protecting one’s reputation is harder than it has ever been before partly because of the ease with which one can go online and destroy someone’s reputation with a few clicks. It is not surprising that since there are very few remedies to repairing one’s reputation once the proverbial damaging tweets, blogs, and images are splashed across the cyberverse that people are looking to legal remedies to help prevent the problem. That is where “love contracts” have come into play. Traditionally these contracts were signed by employers (typically male) and employees (typically female) before entering into a relationship. These contractors were intended to protect the employer from accusations that the relationships were non-consensual, etc. and to protect their reputation should the relationship go sour. Nowadays women are using these love contracts to help protect their reputations from the likes of “revenge posting.” These contracts literally legally place financial penalties should a party post unflattering photos or details of the other. They don’t stop there parties to the contract may find themselves owing the other party cash fines for cheating, making false statements online, etc. Would you sign a love contract? Certainly the internet has many a cautionary tale of people who wish they had made their exes sign on the dotted line.