Infidelity Investigation - What Exactly Does It Involve?

by Dr. Reena Sommer

Did you know that most common issue private investigators are hired for is infidelity investigations? Talk to any "Private - I" and invariably, you will be told that bulk of their work involves conducting surveillance of spouses who are suspected of having extramarital affairs. Based on my own experience working with men and women who believe that their relationship with partners may be affected by infidelity, considerable money is spent paying for infidelity investigations.

How Are Infidelity Investigations Conducted?

There is no rocket science to conducting infidelity investigations. The first step is to hire a licensed private investigator. Although anyone can do surveillance, having a license to do so exempts a private investigator from being charged with stalking. This is important to know because the most common technique used in infidelity investigations is "passive surveillance". What this means is the investigator simply monitors and observes the person suspected of marital infidelity and then then gathers evidence to show that this may actually be happening. Generally, evidence of cheating comes in the form of photos. However other times, a private investigator may use a more active form of surveillance such as planting recording devices in a person's home, office or vehicle.

Regardless of the approach used by private investigators in conducting infidelity investigations, you can be certain that the process will be both time consuming and costly. This is mainly because it takes considerable time to gather the type of evidence that will show that the suspected spouse is actually cheating. Needless to say, most people who are having an extramarital affair are reasonably discreet and go to great lengths not to get caught cheating. With this in mind, it is understandable that a private investigator may spend long hours parked outside of a home, office, restaurant or hotel with the hope of finding the right opportunity to gather evidence of an extramarital affair.

There most critical error people most often make when they retain an investigator to conduct an infidelity investigation is to let their spouse know that he or she is under surveillance. In most cases, people are not so stupid as to tell their spouses that they are being monitored. Instead, they do make the mistake of not keeping the infidelity investigation completely secret. And by talking to friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members, information about the surveillance increases the likelihood that the information will inevitably leaks out. This of course will sabotage the whole infidelity investigation when the spouse suspected of cheating gets wind of what is going on. Similarly, when the private investigator reports that he or she is close to getting hard evidence of the suspected infidelity, the client may blurt this out and inform the cheating spouse before the infidelity investigation is complete. As you can see, these are two examples of serious mistakes people often make.

There is no doubt that infidelity is a source of considerable emotional turmoil and pain. For some affected spouses, hiring a private investigator to provide proof of the infidelity is important in helping them come to terms with the extramarital affairs. For other spouses, finding out the truth may be too painful to bear. Before retaining a private investigator to conduct an infidelity investigation, it is best to consider your motivations for doing so and your likely reaction to the evidence that is gathered.

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