Deepfake Evidence in Family Court: Detection and Sanctions

It’s never been easier to fake a damning text, clone a voice, or doctor a video — and family court is where it does the most damage. Judges in custody and divorce fights often have to act fast, in emergency hearings, on the strength of a screenshot or a recording. If a fabricated one slips through, it can shape who gets the kids.

The rules for proving what’s real haven’t caught up yet. The federal courts have a new rule for AI evidence in the works, but it isn’t in effect and won’t be for a while, so for now you’re still working with the authentication rules you already know — and with detection tools that are far from foolproof. This session walks through how to tell real from fake, and how to handle the evidence from the moment it comes in — intake, preservation, chain of custody, and discovery — so it holds up when the other side pushes back.

Then it turns to what you can do when you catch a fake: the ways to ask the court for sanctions — contempt, discovery sanctions, having fees shifted to the other side — how to build a record that gets your forensic costs paid back, and the federal options for fighting back against fake intimate images under the TAKE IT DOWN Act.