CALIFORNIA FAMILY LAW
...Custody and Visitation
......Evidentiary Issues: Selected
.........Eavesdropping Evidence
 13 Cards On This Topic:
  • Illegally obtained eavesdropping evidence not admissible in family law proceeding.
  • Invasion of Privacy Act prohibits electronic eavesdropping or recording of conversations reasonably believed to be private.
  • Pen. Code §632.7 prohibits parties as well as nonparties from intentionally recording a cellular or cordless communications without the consent of all parties to the communication.
  • A conversation is confidential if a party to that conversation has an objectively reasonable expectation it is not being overheard or recorded.
  • Interspousal wiretapping evidence must be excluded under federal Omnibus Crime Control Act; no implied exceptions for family members wiretapping family phone.
  • Meeting properly recorded where DVRO gave DV victim permission to record communications and where restrained party's attorney was aware of the order.
  • A communication must be protected if ••either•• party reasonably expects the communication to be confined to the parties.
  • PC §633.5 allows a parent to consent, on behalf of a child, to recording another surreptitiously for the purpose of obtaining evidence of a crime specified in the statute, such as sexual molestation.
  • No abuse of discretion in decertifying class on issue whether any one class member can satisfy the reasonable expectation of privacy test—individual issues to be assessed predominated, making a class action unmanageable.
  • Consistent with Flanagan v. Flanagan, PC 647, prohibiting eavesdropping on confidential communication, applies even if the unannounced listener is employed by the same corporate entity as the known participant in the conversation.
  • Tape recording inadvertently made of conversation by answering phone properly admitted for limited purpose of impeachment.
  • Use of illegal recording of phone conversation to refresh recollection of participant permissible; recording itself inadmissible.
  • Family member may intercept another's phone conversations by use of extension phone in family home under federal wiretapping exemption generally covering business extensions.


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