Social Network : Woman sues Facebook boyfriend for $8,386 after 'romance' sours

How much is a broken heart worth? For one woman, the devastation she allegedly suffered at the hands of a man she met on Facebook has a precise figure: $8,386.88.
Single mom Cheryl Gray says Wylie Iwan, whom she met on the social networking site last November, led her on and caused her to drain her finances as she lavished him with gifts and spent money on a vacation to his home state of Washington. 

|f that wasn't bad enough, she says, when the relationship soured he posted vile comments on her Facebook wall. That was when Gray, an unemployed paralegal, took an extraordinary step: She sued him.

On May 18, she filed a civil suit against Iwan in Michigan, asking for $8,368.88 for misrepresentation, promissory estoppel, defamation of character and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Gray, 50,says she was 'devastated' and furious when Iwan informed her a week before her planned trip to visit him in Washington that he'd met someone else.

Now, 'I feel foolish,' Gray told Washington state's Tri-City Herald. 'I'm not so much mad or angry. I feel foolish. I am disillusioned.' 


The pair first met over Facebook and quickly found common ground playing the online game Mafia Wars. But Iwan, who works at the restaurant Applebees, insists the relationship never progressed past the friendship stage. 


He clearly told her, he says, that she was welcome to travel to visit him as 'my friend.'

He also says he never led Gray on, and in fact quickly told her when he'd met someone new -- at which point she seemed fine with it.  


But Iwan, 35, claims she soon launched a hate group about him on Facebook, going so far as to brand him an 'online predator.'

 

'I want this lady to move on and leave me alone,' Iwan told the newspaper. 'It's a completely frivolous lawsuit.'

While this lawsuit is a novel one, Gray isn't the first to try to recoup money spent on a doomed relationship. According to Eric Goldman, a Santa Clara University law professor, a judge will want to know if the case constitutes fraud before deciding to hear a case like this one.


'Courts get reluctant to regulate matters of the heart,' Goldman told the Tri-City Herald. 'Judges don't really want to be in the middle of a lover's quarrel.'

Gray, who lives with her 13-year-old daughter, said she and Iwan grew closer as the months passed playing Mafia Wars, exchanging Facebook messages, texting and chatting by phone.


Iwan eventually invited to join a special group page where they could 'meet' privately, sometimes spending more than eight hours a day online together, Gray claims.

During that time, Iwan used the phrases 'I love you' or 'I'm falling in love with you,' and making plans for the future. 'He led me to believe for a number of months that our meeting was to explore a potential relationship between the two of us,' she says.
Then came the gifts. Gray says she sent Iwan and his son presents, including on Christmas, his birthday, and Valentine's Day. 


Next was her trip to Washington in April, for which she purchased airplane tickets, booked a rental car and a hotel room in Seattle, and scored tickets to the Mariners' opening home game.

Iwan says he, too, was happy to meet.
'We decided — it wasn't all me — but we decided we wanted to meet each other," he told the paper.

'After that, things started toward a relationship and we started sharing more information. For Valentine's Day, she said she wanted to tell me she loved me as a friend. I told her I love her, too. I was meaning it as a friend.'

The trip never happened, however, because Iwan told her just days before she was due to leave about his new relationship.


'I had done some very nice things for him,' Gray says. 'He supposedly met this person on Saturday, but I don't believe that. I believe he was already involved in a relationship. ... I felt like this guy is taking me on a ride.'

Iwan claims she lied to him, too, telling him early on that she was 42. He says she only confessed to being 50 when their plans to meet up grew closer.


He also says she took screen shots of their private Facebook page, and proceeded to write on his wall claiming he led her on for three months. Iwan says he only posted the vile comment about Gray after she allegedly created a hate group in his name.


Gray now says she was 'shocked, humiliated and embarrassed' by Iwan's portrayal of her in posts, which were visible to all their friends, and said her reputation was injured, according to court documents Gray filed.

Social Network : Facebook Is Number One Tool For Divorce Lawyers

The days of finding lipstick on a shirt collar are over. All you need now is to look on a cheating spouse's Facebook wall, as one man in a 20-year long marriage learned.
KOMO has the sad story of a man whose wife reconnected with an old flame on Facebook. At first it was innocent. But then things escalated and he found her addicted to checking Facebook, behaving secretively about her online activity, and snapping her laptop closed when he asked her what she was doing. When he got access to her cellphone, he found a stream of steamy cellphone messages from her old college bonk-buddy.
One divorce attorney says that the first place she goes to when starting a case is all the various social networking sites, Facebook being the primary one.
The information gleaned there can be useful when trying to negotiate a better settlement for their clients. Like a screenshot of a series of flirty wall posts.
When you're in a committed relationship, it's important to convey your boundaries online. One couple that wrote the book, "Facebook And Your Marriage" suggests making sure to set your relationship status to reflect that, letting one another know when old pals pop out of the woodwork with friend requests, and even sharing your Facebook user names and passwords with each other. Transparency is trust, right?

Social Network : The marriage killer: One in five American divorces now involve Facebook

It used to be the tell-tale lipstick on the collar. Then there were the give-away texts that spelled the death knell for many marriages.

But now one in five divorces involve the social networking site Facebook, according to a new survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

A staggering 80 per cent of divorce lawyers have also reported a spike in the number of cases that use social media for evidence of cheating.

Passion killer: 80 per cent of divorce lawyers have reported a spike in the number of cases using social media for evidence of cheating, with Facebook by far the biggest offender

Flirty messages and photographs found on Facebook are increasingly being cited as proof of unreasonable behaviour or irreconcilable differences.

Many cases revolve around social media users who get back in touch with old flames they hadn’t heard from in many years.

Facebook was by far the biggest offender, with 66 per cent of lawyers citing it as the primary source of evidence in a divorce case. MySpace followed with 15 per cent, Twitter at 5 per cent and other choices lumped together at 14 per cent.

The survey reflects the findings of a UK law firm last year showing that 20 per cent of its divorce petitions blamed Facebook flings.

Ultimatum: Rev Cedric Miller urged his congregations to close down their Facebook accounts, but the pastor's own non-Facebook related transgressions have since caught up with him

‘The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to,’ said Mark Keenan, managing director of Divorce-Online.

Friends Reunited faced similar claims when it was launched to help people reconnect with old classmates, but the 23 million plus people now using Facebook in Britain means it is having a much bigger effect on rising divorce rates.

‘Desperate Housewives’ star Eva Longoria recently split from her basketball player husband Tony Parker after alleging that he strayed with a woman he kept in touch with on Facebook.

New evidence: It used to be lipstick on the collar, but these days love-cheats are turning to social networking sites to fulfil their fantasies

An American minister also made the headlines recently when he called Facebook a ‘portal to infidelity’ and insisted that his congregation delete their accounts after revealing that 20 couples attending his New Jersey church had been led astray through the site.

Rev. Cedric Millier, who runs the Living World Christian Fellowship Church in Neptune, New Jersey, said Facebook enabled spouses to reconnect with former lovers, leading to rows and bitterness.

But Rev. Miller was forced to take a leave of absence after his own non-Facebook transgressions were revealed in an admission that he took part in three-way sexual trysts in the past.

‘Going through a divorce always results in heightened levels of personal scrutiny. If you publicly post any contradictions to previously made statements and promises, an estranged spouse will certainly be one of the first people to notice and make use of that evidence,’ said American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers President Marlene Eskind Moses.

‘As everyone continues to share more and more aspects of their lives on social networking sites, they leave themselves open to much greater examinations of both their public and private lives in these sensitive situations,’ she added.

Marriage counsellor Terry Real said he believes some users go on Facebook to create a fantasy life and escape the drudgery.

‘There is nothing more seductive that the ‘one that got away’ fantasy that’s always better than someone who is up to her eyeballs in bills,’ he told ABC News in the U.S..

But he said Facebook is not really to blame.

‘Before it was email, then before that it was the phone. The problem is not Facebook, it is the loss of love in your marriage,’ he said.