My question involves a marriage in the state of: Separation / Divorce Processing. State of California.
I have a close friend who has a wife that started sleeping around and now wants out of the marriage. She is claiming that her husband has been abusive to her but I'm convinced that she is just using it as an excuse to leave the family. He's told me that she will often tell him that if he tries to do anything about custody of their youngest daughter, she will say that he beat her so he just backs off.
I have been thinking about the idea of attempting to record these statements to use against her but I know that California is what I believe is a 2-party consent state for such things so even though they're married, he still doesn't have the legal right to secretly record her --there is still an expectation of privacy. What recourse is there in this situation? My only other thought is the fact that there are nearly 50 people I can think of that could testify on his behalf that he has never been violent but that can still be disputed because the claim could be that he was never violent in public. Hell, she could just go out and get herself beat up and claim that he did it (kinda' like the old first Dirty Harry movie). Is he completely vulnerable here?
Another idea I've had is to have him get a small portable voice recorder and when his wife walks in, simply say, "Just so you know, I'm recording our conversations." That might cause her to at least be on her best behavior for the remainder of the time (as it usually does with law enforcement) but it also may just make things worse...

