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The USA Today discussed yesterday how divorce lawyers are using Facebook and data from World of Warcraft for evidence in divorce cases:

Facebook is the unrivaled leader for turning virtual reality into real-life divorce drama. Sixty-six percent of the lawyers surveyed [by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers] cited Facebook indiscretions as the source of online evidence.

Why? Here’s some examples from the article:

• Husband goes on Match.com and declares his single, childless status while seeking primary custody of said nonexistent children.

• Father seeks custody of the kids, claiming (among other things) that his ex-wife never attends the events of their young ones. Subpoenaed evidence from the gaming site World of Warcraft tracks her there with her boyfriend at the precise time she was supposed to be out with the children. Mom loves Facebook’s Farmville, too, at all the wrong times.

• Mom denies in court that she smokes marijuana but posts partying, pot-smoking photos of herself on Facebook.

Ultimately, people anticipating a fight in divorce should be careful that their story matches up with what they say and do online.

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You’re more likely to get divorced if your friends and family get divorced.

That’s what a new study says about the effect of social networks on divorce rates. The researches explained:

We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network. We also find that popular people are less likely to get divorced, divorcees have denser social networks, and they are much more likely to remarry other divorcees.

I wonder if the effect translates to online social networks like Facebook. One one hand, many people only casually know some of their Facebook “friends.” On the other hand, the study mentioned that the spread of divorce rates through social networks is not confined by geography.

I’ve already talked about how lawyer are using Facebook for evidence in divorce cases. This would be just another way that the popular social networking tool has been influencing this area of law.

Thanks to Daniel Clement for alerting me to this study over at his blog, the New York Divorce Report.

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Anneli Rufus had an interesting article at the Daily Beast about things that make it more likely a couple will get divorced.

You’re more likely to get divorced if…

You’re gay.

If you’re in a male same-sex marriage, it’s 50 percent more likely to end in divorce than a heterosexual marriage. If you’re in a female same-sex marriage, this figure soars to 167 percent.

A research team led by Stockholm University demography professor Gunnar Anderson based their calculations on legal partnerships in Norway and Sweden, where five out of every 1,000 new couples are same-sex.

You have a daughter.

If you have a daughter, you’re nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than if you have a son.

This figure multiplies with the numbers of daughters or sons. “We think it happens because fathers get more invested in family life when they have boys,” says Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History and director of research for the Council on Contemporary Families.

You’re an evangelical Christian.

If you’re an evangelical Christian adult who has been married, there’s a 26 percent likelihood that you’ve been divorced—compared to a 28 percent chance for Catholics and a 38 percent chance for non-Christians.

That’s according to the evangelically affiliated Barna Research Group, whose long-term clients include the Disney Channel. The same study cited a 30 percent divorce rate for atheists.

The wife is older than the husband.

If you’re a woman two or more years older than your husband, your marriage is 53 percent more likely to end in divorce than if he was one year younger to three years older.

Wide age gaps between spouses can create sexual discord and other disagreements. “Our culture is so focused on personal satisfaction and happiness that some people feel this is a contributing factor in divorce,” says lawyer Emily Doskow, author of Nolo’s Essential Guide to Divorce. “Each partner keeps saying, ‘I know I could be happier.’”

You live in a red state.

If you live in a red state, you’re 27 percent more likely to get divorced than if you live in a blue state.Maybe that’s because red-state couples traditionally marry younger—and the younger the partners, the riskier the marriage. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the states with the lowest median age at marriage are Utah, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma.

You don’t do well on IQ tests.

If you’re of “below average” intelligence, you’re 50 percent more likely to be divorced than those of “above average” intelligence.

Presented by University of Delaware education professor Linda Gottfredson, codirector of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society, this figure joins assertions in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s controversial 1994 bestseller The Bell Curve that those with IQs of 100 face a 28 percent probability of divorce in the first five years of marriage, compared to just a 9 percent probability for those with IQs of 130.

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