The appearance of infidelity in the Polish family law

The subject matter of this article is the issue of breach of the obligation of matrimonial fidelity. Practitioners face this problem in the context of the divorce proceedings’ analysis of the breakdown of a marriage and deciding on the guilty party in this regard. The aforementioned sphere is particularly interesting in the context of the development of communication technology, which has contributed both to the creation of new forms of and documenting marital infidelity. This, in turn, has brought new tasks to the field of collecting evidence before the trial. It has become necessary to decide in which situations the right to a court outweighs the protection of privacy and in which cases the secrecy of communication is violated – or even whether a possible illegal obtaining of information occurs. In the event of marital infidelity, it is also necessary to consider the importance of the forgiveness of acts committed by one of the spouses in the context of the breakdown of the marriage.

Keywords: appearance of infidelity, right to privacy, the secrecy of communication, the illegal obtaining of information, forgiveness

The subject matter of this article is the issue of breach of the obligation of matrimonial fidelity. Practitioners face this problem in the context of the divorce proceedings’ analysis of the breakdown of a marriage and deciding on the guilty party in this regard. The aforementioned sphere is particularly interesting in the context of the development of communication technology, which has contributed both to the creation of new forms of and documenting marital infidelity. This, in turn, has brought new tasks to the field of collecting evidence before the trial. It has become necessary to decide in which situations the right to a court outweighs the protection of privacy and in which cases the secrecy of communication is violated – or even whether a possible illegal obtaining of information occurs. In the event of marital infidelity, it is also necessary to consider the importance of the forgiveness of acts committed by one of the spouses in the context of the breakdown of the marriage.