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Specialty tag(s): Pre-Divorce Guidance, Divorce

Divorce, Child Custody, and the AI Confetti Cannon: Spewing Private Information for All to See

Tom Trahan | November 2, 2026

In 2012, the festivities at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade included confetti cannons showering the event with colorful paper. Unfortunately, the content of the paper was also colorful – police said the shredded documents used as confetti included sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers of personnel and police incident reports.¹ 

Your divorce or child custody case involves your most private information and using artificial intelligence (AI) to assist you can lead to unwilling, widespread publication of that information. 

With the rise of AI in every aspect of modern life, Texans are creating AI questions involving their personal problems – including their divorce and child custody issues – and they may be shooting their personal information into the public. One of the known issues with AI is that it uses information inputted by users in future answers.² According to a Stanford study in 2025, at least six leading U.S. companies feed user inputs back into their models to improve capabilities.³

So, if you are using AI to give you advice about your divorce or child custody case, you are running the risk that any of the private information you put in can be accessed by others. Many individuals involved in divorce and child custody are using AI to assist them – from drafting motions and pleadings to creating or analyzing discovery and other exchanged information. In these cases, that information often includes children’s names and ages (required in some Texas pleadings), Social Security numbers (often included in tax and financial documents exchanged in discovery), and detailed information about net worth. We often refuse to share this information with family, let alone anyone with access to the internet.

Even worse, opposing parties and attorneys can legally request your AI searches in discovery. All those intimate questions asked of AI about the most important issues in your life can go directly to the people who can use it to hurt you the most. 

• How do I hide assets? 
• How will my affair affect my divorce? 
• How will my old DUI, arrest record, or criminal history ruin my chances at child custody? 
• Will my mental health diagnoses (e.g., depression, bipolar disorder) be exposed in court? 
• Can my spouse use private text messages or photos they found on a shared family computer in court? 

Just asking these questions of AI hands the other side ammunition to use against you.

At Goranson Bain Ausley, we are aware of these concerns and maintain the privacy of your information. We exchange information through secure portals and delete private information we are not required to share. When we use AI and other technology, we work with providers who properly limit the use of information. Searches by Goranson Bain Ausley attorneys are protected by the attorney work product privilege, while a client’s search of the exact same question is not. We respect clients’ desires to backstop the information they are getting with independent verification – but we can assist you in doing so in a manner protected from exposure to the opposing party in your case. AI is a valuable tool, and knowing how to use it responsibly is essential to quality representation of our clients.

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1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/shredded-police-documents-used-as-parade-confetti

2. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/10/ai-chatbot-privacy-concerns-risks-research

3. Id.

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