Your Divorce Attorney Wants You to Stop Using ChatGPT: Family Law, AI, and the Privilege You’re Giving Away
Publish Date: 2026-04-01 05:04:00
Source Domain: www.wardandsmith.com
A recent federal court ruling out of New York has important implications for anyone involved in a family law matter, whether you are navigating a divorce, child custody dispute, alimony proceeding, or property division. This advisory explains how using public artificial intelligence (AI) tools could seriously damage your case.
The Federal Ruling You Need to Know About
A New York federal court recently issued the first ruling to directly address whether conversations with public AI chatbots can be protected by attorney-client privilege or work product doctrine. The answer was clear: they cannot.
In that case, a target of a federal investigation used a public AI platform to create strategy-focused “reports” about the facts and law of his case. He later argued that because he eventually shared those AI outputs with his lawyers and had fed in information he originally received from his attorneys, the materials should be protected.
The court disagreed for three important reasons.
First, the AI is not your lawyer. There was no attorney-client relationship between the user and the AI platform, and privilege only protects confidential communications with your actual attorney.
Second, there was no reasonable expectation of confidentiality because the AI provider’s terms of service allowed the company to collect user inputs and outputs, use them to train its models, and even disclose them to third parties, including regulators.
Third, the conversations were not made for the purpose of obtaining legal advice from counsel. The user initiated them on his own, and the AI tool itself disclaimed giving legal advice.
The court also rejected the argument that these materials were protected as attorney work product, finding that they were created by the client on his own using a public tool, not prepared by or at the direction of counsel.
Why This Matters for Your Family Law Case
You do not need to face a criminal investigation for this ruling to affect you. The…
