The Recording a Client Already Made: Statutory Damages and Felony Exposure in Divorce and Custody

Jonathan D. Steele, Partner | Beermann LLP

Jonathan D. Steele is a partner at Beermann LLP in Chicago, where his divorce and family law practice includes digital evidence and privacy issues: text messages, shared accounts, family devices, location data and electronic financial records, what those records may show, how to preserve them, and when shared access or device monitoring raises privacy or safety concerns. He pursued cybersecurity credentials after seeing how monitoring, account access and digital evidence complicate divorce cases. He handles divorce, custody and parenting time, orders of protection and post-decree disputes through negotiation and trial, along with property division, maintenance, child support and parental responsibilities.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Steele earned his J.D. from The John Marshall Law School in 2011 and his B.A. from Indiana University in 2007, with a concentration in political science. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 2012 and to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 2021. Alongside his law degree he holds a set of cybersecurity and privacy credentials: CompTIA Security+, ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity, the Google Cybersecurity Certificate, EC-Council Cybersecurity Attack and Defense Fundamentals, and the University of Pennsylvania program in Privacy Law and Data Protection. He is also a Certified Financial Litigator through the American Academy of Certified Financial Litigators.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Steele is listed in Best Lawyers in America for 2026–2027 and was named a Leading Lawyer by the Leading Lawyers Network in 2026. The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin included him among its 40 Under Forty Attorneys to Watch in 2025. He has been selected to Illinois Super Lawyers Rising Stars every year since 2016 and was recognized as an Emerging Lawyer by Leading Lawyers in 2017. He has also been named to the American Institute of Family Law Attorneys’ Top 10 Lawyers Under 40 and the National Academy of Family Law Attorneys’ Top 10 Family Law Attorneys Under 40. He serves on the board of the Medical Research Junior Board Foundation of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Steele volunteers with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Cooperating Attorneys Program, providing pro bono privacy help, and works with JUF Community Legal Services, Family Rescue and Sarah’s Inn. He authored a chapter in the IICLE publication Family Law: Child-Related Issues in Dissolution Actions (2026 Edition) and has presented for IICLE on strategic uses of declaratory and summary judgment in family law. He has appeared on numerous podcasts on the intersection of technology and divorce, including episodes on stalking and harassment in divorce, cybersecurity and divorce, and safeguarding personal data during family law disputes. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the Illinois State Bar Association and the Chicago Bar Association.

• Experience

In practice, Mr. Steele’s work on the digital side of divorce includes digital evidence preservation, social media and e-discovery, and device-security risk review, bringing in security professionals when a device may be compromised. His litigation practice covers divorce trials, child custody and spousal maintenance, high-net-worth matters including hidden-asset discovery involving cryptocurrency, offshore accounts and shell entities, business valuation and prenuptial agreements. He has represented clients before the Illinois Appellate Court and the Illinois Supreme Court, has handled matters pro hac vice in neighboring states, and has taken more than 100 depositions. More about Mr. Steele’s work, including his digital evidence and privacy practice, can be found at steelefamlaw.com.

SESSION 1 – What a client’s recording costs, and what to do about it: wiretap exposure from intake to motion practice | Jonathan D. Steele | 12:00pm – 1:30pm

This 90-minute session covers both halves of the problems a family lawyer faces when a client arrives with a recording they already made: a phone call with a spouse, a confrontation at a custody exchange, or a child talking to the other parent. The first part covers what the recording costs. Attorneys will learn why the federal Wiretap Act, a one-party consent statute, generally permits a recording made by a participant, and how 18 U.S.C. §§ 2511 and 2520 create felony exposure and statutory damages of $10,000 or $100 per day when the client intercepts conversations they were not part of, through spyware, a device left recording, or a child’s calls with the other parent; how the all-party consent states (including California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington) make the client’s own recording the problem; how Illinois’ eavesdropping statute, after People v. Clark, People v. Melongo and the 2014 amendments, makes surreptitiously recording a private conversation a felony, bars the recording as evidence and gives the other party a civil claim for actual and punitive damages; the exemptions that matter most in family cases, including Illinois’ exemption for recording under a reasonable suspicion of a crime against the client or a household member, and whether a custody exchange in a public place is a private conversation at all; when the vicarious consent doctrine protects a parent recording a child and when it fails, and how the use-and-disclosure provisions reach the attorney who uses the recording. The second part covers what to do about it: the intake questions to ask before anyone presses play, preservation duties and the spoliation sanctions for deleting or altering a recording, when to retain a forensic examiner and what a defensible copy looks like, authentication and the attacks the other side will bring, motions in limine and the statutory suppression remedy under § 2515, and Model Rules 3.4, 4.4 and 8.4 as applied to a recording obtained unlawfully, with notes on where state versions of those rules differ. Attendees will leave with a working protocol for advising the client, protecting the file, and getting the recording in or keeping it out of the divorce or custody case.