In a divorce, what was deleted often matters as much as what was kept — but it only counts when it is gathered lawfully. We examine devices you own or jointly own, or act on instruction from family solicitors in Swansea and Cardiff. Freephone advice before anything is sent.
Discreet, documented, defensible. A free diagnostic and an agreed written scope come first; forensic work is payable upfront.
These are the family-case situations we help with across Swansea and South Wales — always on a device there is a lawful basis to examine.
Before any examination we settle one point: do you have the right to look? Three footings satisfy us — the device is genuinely yours; it is a jointly owned family asset such as the shared PC or a backup drive; or the work comes through your solicitor or under a direction of the court. Nothing else will do. Slipping into a spouse's private phone or email, whatever it might reveal, is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, the material would very likely be ruled inadmissible, and the attempt itself can damage the case it was meant to help. The lawful route is slower by days and better by miles.
The recoverable material is often extensive: erased WhatsApp threads, texts and iMessages, emails, photographs with their embedded dates, documents and spreadsheets, and the browsing history around key events. Timestamps show when files were made, opened or destroyed. In money cases we frequently piece together bank statements, transfer records and bookkeeping files that bear on disclosure — useful where the declared figures and the visible lifestyle refuse to line up.
Family work usually flows through solicitors, and we are comfortable either way: instructed by one side, or appointed as a single joint expert serving both. In the joint role we image the agreed device, confine the examination to what the court has sanctioned, and report impartially — our duty runs to the court rather than to whoever settles the bill. Findings come in plain language a judge can use, with the technical detail kept to an appendix and the limits of the evidence stated as plainly as the evidence itself.
If a device you are entitled to examine may hold evidence, resist every urge to look. Each unlock, app-store recovery tool and helpful friend having a browse writes new data over the old and muddies the timestamps a court will later scrutinise. Turn it off, keep it somewhere safe, and either ring our freephone from anywhere in Swansea or South Wales or ask your solicitor to instruct us — from that point the handling is documented properly.
The write-blocked imaging, hash verification and custody records behind family work are described on the forensic data recovery hub. Like all forensic cases it is payable upfront — £800 + VAT for the standard investigation with a detailed report, or £400 + VAT for the binary-image and deleted-file extraction without one; both sit on the data recovery cost page. A BitLocker-encrypted family computer can be decrypted first where the recovery key is lawfully held.
From your own or a jointly owned device — or one the court has directed we examine — these are the usual categories.
Erased WhatsApp, iMessage and SMS conversations.
Deleted correspondence, documents and spreadsheets.
Removed images together with their embedded dates.
Search history and sign-in activity around key events.
Statements, transfers and bookkeeping files for disclosure.
Creation, opening and deletion times that anchor events.
However certain you are about what a spouse's private phone or email would show, we will not access it covertly — that is a Computer Misuse Act offence, the product would likely be inadmissible, and it can rebound on you in the proceedings. Devices you own, assets you genuinely share, and instructions through a solicitor or the family court: those are the three doors into this service, and the only three.
Family cases start with the lawful-basis conversation, so please ring 0800 689 0668 — or ask your solicitor to make contact — before posting a device. We will confirm entitlement and agree what to send, with custody logged from the moment the device arrives at our secure Bristol location.
Sending a drive from a computer, laptop, MacBook, iMac, CCTV / DVR or server? Please remove the internal hard drive or SSD and send us just the drive — we don't provide an internal drive-removal service. We don't recover storage soldered to a motherboard (e.g. Apple Silicon Macs and some thin laptops) — only drives that can be removed and sent to us.
↓ Print the booking-in & shipping form (PDF)
Mark the package for the attention of Bristol Data Recovery and we'll call you as soon as we diagnose your media.
Not sure what to send? Call 0800 689 0668 first or use the free online diagnostic.
Ring us or route the instruction through your solicitor — free diagnostic first, court-ready handling throughout.