Is Tracking Your Spouse with GPS Legal?

 

CAN I TRACK MY SPOUSE?

 

In our increasingly high-tech world, it is possible to track people and things with a variety of applications and technology. You may have OnStar or other GPS tracking on your vehicle that you can track with a phone App. You may have Find-My-Phone on your Apple devices. You may use Life 360 to stay connected with your children and spouse.   Additionally, you can easily purchase GPS tracking devices from air tags to dog collars.  When does using this technology cross the line from legitimate to harassing or illegal?

 

WHEN IS CONDUCT CRIMINAL?

 

Conduct becomes criminal in nature where it violates a criminal statute. Minnesota Statutes Sec. 626A.25 makes it unlawful to install a tracking device without a court order unless mobile tracking device was placed with consent of the owner of the object being tracked.  As an example, in Minnesota, Shawn Kelly was charged with multiple felonies for allegedly placing a GPS tracking device on his ex-girlfriend’s car and following her from Michigan to Minnesota.  That would certainly also be true if a GPS device is surreptitiously attached to or dropped in a vehicle, purse or clothing of the person being tracked without their knowledge.

 

WHEN IS CONDUCT HARASSSING?

 

Even behavior that is not criminal may be used to acquire a Harassment Restraining Order (HRO) .  Generally,  a family law court may frown upon the use of hi-tech GPS tracking to determine a spouse’s location, However, to be harassing in the context of a Harassment Restraining Order, a Court must find the person restrained committed repeated incidents of intrusive or unwanted acts, words or gestures that have a substantial adverse impact or are intended to have a substantial adverse impact on the other person.  

 

It is unlikely that using telephone app that was connected between the parties in better days would reach that level. However, there was an unreported case in the Minnesota Court of Appeals in 2015 where the court sustained a HRO where a husband activated OnStar on a vehicle his wife regularly drove.  The court found the Respondent had no reason to activate OnStar other than to track his spouse even if he had a property interest in the vehicle. The case appears to have hinged on who used the vehicle regularly.

 

The key issue between married couples is whether they regularly share the use of the house, the computer, or the vehicle being tracked. If the couple shared these assets, then a convincing argument could be made that neither has any reasonable expectation of privacy that the asset is not being tracked.