We offer several services for private individuals, which are listed in our website. Our two top reasons are background checks and infidelity investigations. We use a database service restricted to state licensed investigators, which is not available to the general public for our background checks, and one of our specialties is in infidelity investigations, with one of the highest success rates in San Antonio.

Yes it does, it has an impact on the amount of alimony, if you qualify for alimony, and in the distribution of marital assets. Texas is pretty big on keeping marriages together, and if one spouse can prove the other spouses adulterous affairs were the reason for the divorce, it is considered a fault divorce. Also I have worked a case where a judge ordered the reimbursement of our clients fee’s paid to us, from his share of marital assets because she proved his adultery, with evidence obtained by us.

Conducting infidelity investigations, are some of the harder investigations to perform. When it comes to a courtroom, its not what you know but what you can prove, and that’s where we come in. Usually the meet ups are at small bars making it very easy to spot a familiar face and it just takes one time for your spouse to notice you following him/her, or see you or a friend of yours that he has met, in the area, and they will shut down the affair for awhile, so that no incriminating evidence can be obtained. Also courts will put more weight on evidence obtained from an impartial licensed professional investigator than from a spouse or spouses’ friend.

In proving adultery in a civil court, you do not actually have to show the court a video of your spouse engaged in sex with another person, and depending on the circumstances, you could actually be charged with a crime should you have such a video in your possession, or at the very least a civil tort. Standards of proof in civil court are not the same as a criminal court. All that is required to prove adultery is to be able to show circumstantial evidence that a spouse was “likely” committing adultery. We have vast experience in this area, and the evidence we obtain will be admissible in court.

This question points out one of the main reasons to hire a private investigator, to get you court-admissible evidence. Texas recognizes different forms of invasion of privacy, which extend to married people such as intrusion upon a person’s seclusion. Texas courts have held that a spouse’s actions in making a secretive recording of the other spouse who believes he/she is in a complete state of privacy in an area of the marital home constitute’s an invasion of that privacy. In a court ruling, Clayton v. Richards, 47 S.W.3d 149 (Tex. App. 2001) Judge Donald R. Ross pointed out that while Sec. 16.02 of the Texas Penal code pertains strictly to “wiretapping … within the marital home,” and although “the act of videotaping a spouse does not meet the technical requirements to come under the” sanctions of Texas penal code Sec. 16.02, “an individual’s right of privacy is compromised no less from being secretly videotaped than from being secretly recorded. A secret videotape of an individual who presumes to be in a private place is an even greater intrusion of privacy than secretly recorded conversations.”

So due to Judge Donald R. Ross ruling, and his written opinion, no video you might obtain from that hidden camera would be admissible in court, and should you have a hidden camera that records audio, and you have recorded conversations between your spouse and whoever they are with, you could very well be charged criminally. Some clients have stated they just want to know, and won’t use the video or voice recording in court. Yes they could do that, however, if the spouse, spied on by these means, was to ever get possession of the video or audio recording, would it be worth going to jail over, when we could find out if infidelity is taking place by legal means?

Also on a related issue, spy equipment companies on the internet will try and sell voice-activated audio recorders, with instructions of hiding it in areas their spouse may be in, such as in a car, or bedroom, bathroom, with the intent of covertly recording their spouse’s conversations. Doing this is a clear violation of Texas penal code 16.02. In Texas, at least one party to the communication must be aware that their conversation with another is being recorded for it to be legally recorded.