Divorce guides · Updated August 2026
How to preserve text messages for a divorce case.
Text messages are often the most important evidence a divorce case has — and the most commonly mishandled. Here's how to preserve them properly: complete threads, both sides of the conversation, timestamps intact.
Why screenshots alone aren't a plan
A screenshot shows a fragment: a few messages, cropped out of a longer conversation, often without the date, the contact's identity, or the other side's context. Opposing counsel's first move against a screenshot is to ask what came before it and after it. The answer you want to give is: here is the complete thread, both sides, timestamped.
Screenshots also pile up. Two hundred images in a camera roll, out of order and undated, are close to unusable when an attorney needs to find one exchange from last March. Preserve threads, not fragments.
The four rules of preserving message evidence
- Keep it complete. Whole conversations, not excerpts. Context is what makes a message mean what you say it means.
- Keep both sides. Your messages matter as much as theirs — a one-sided record looks curated because it is.
- Keep the timestamps. When something was said is often the point. Preserve the original dates, not the date you exported.
- Never edit. Don't delete embarrassing messages from a thread you intend to use. An incomplete thread that surfaces later as complete — from the other side's phone — damages more than the messages would have.
On iPhone
Apple doesn't offer a one-tap "export conversation" on the phone itself, so preservation takes one of these routes:
- Keep the device intact. The simplest rule: don't delete the threads, and don't delete the app data. The phone itself is the original record.
- Back it up. A full iPhone backup (iCloud or a computer) preserves the message database with its metadata. Make one now, before anything else changes.
- On a Mac, the Messages app syncs your conversations and can be scrolled and captured at full length with dates showing.
- Long threads: capture systematically — top to bottom, no gaps, with the contact header and date stamps visible — rather than hunting single messages.
On Android
- SMS backup files. Android can export text messages to a backup XML file (several established backup apps do this) — a complete, timestamped, machine-readable record of every thread. This is the strongest Android preservation format.
- Keep the device intact, same as iPhone: the phone is the original.
- Messaging apps (WhatsApp and others) have their own export features that produce complete threads with dates — use them per app.
What about deleting messages?
Once litigation is underway or reasonably expected, deleting relevant messages can be treated as destroying evidence — courts sanction it, and judges remember it. If a thread is relevant, preserve it, even if you don't like what's in it. Talk to your attorney before deleting anything.
Where the preserved record should live
A backup file in a downloads folder and four hundred screenshots in a camera roll are preserved — but not usable. The record your attorney needs is organized: threads intact, dated, searchable, and in the case file with everything else.
This is the problem CaseWeave was built around. Text threads come into the case as evidence — complete, both sides, timestamps intact — alongside the photographs, documents and email, each item fingerprinted on arrival and preserved exactly as it came in. Your attorney opens the thread from last March in seconds, because it's in the file, not in your phone.
This guide is general information about preserving records, not legal advice. Your attorney's instructions about your case come first.