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Williams v Williams

The Michigan Court of Appeals has just decided a case which is very important to parents. The case, Williams v Williams, involved the question of whether a parent has the right to "eavesdrop" on his/her child's telephone conversations without the child's knowledge or consent. There are both state and federal eavesdropping statutes that generally prohibit the surreptitious monitoring of conversations in which one is not a participant.

In Williams, the father who did the eavesdropping defended his activity by claiming that it was necessary to discover whether the child's mother was disparaging him in violation of a court order. This defense was rejected. The Michigan Court of Appeals held that under Michigan's wiretapping statute, a custodial parent does not automatically have the child's "implied consent" to listen in, even if there are valid parental reasons for doing so. The Court withheld judgment on whether or not the federal wiretapping statute would allow this defense.

The bottom line is that parents may be subject to criminal prosecution under state law for eavesdropping if they listen in on their children's conversations. While the Williams case involved listening to the other parent and the child during a conversation, the statute presumably applies to any conversation that the listener is not participating in himself or herself.

Many parents may have concerns about this decision as it subtracts a right to monitor a child's activities at the same time as the parent's "responsibility" for that child is increasing in the eyes of society. The proper forum for raising such concerns is your local state representative because he/she can propose changes (or exceptions) to existing statutes. The Court of Appeals is limited to interpreting statutes in cases like Williams and finding those statutes unenforceable only if they violate constitutional provisions, conflict with other laws, and/or are too vague to be enforced.