As an Investigator serving Commercial, Legal and Private clients the balance of proof required can be daunting and different.

When a commercial client wants proof against an employee, often all that is required is the ‘balance of probability’. Basically this means is that the person making the decision in a company disciplinary hearing against the employee has to believe that on a 51% for and 49% against scale that the person is guilty of the offence.

When dealing with a criminal matter which will be dealt with by a criminal court, the balance of proof must be 100% and therefore ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’. This is when the person charged with the offence could not possibly be innocent, because the weight of evidence to the contrary is overwhelmingly strong.

However increasingly in private cases and specifically in marital or infidelity investigations  the balance of proof is decided on and by the mind of the client. We had a client enquiry recently who was convinced that their partner was cheating because they were aware that emails were being exchanged!

The so called ‘cyber affair’, This is where a would be cheater can sit in the comfort of their own home with a laptop on their knee (with their partner in the same room) and conduct a relationship with a willing respondent at the other side of the world. No illicit meetings, no tell tale credit card receipts and no bumping in to the nosey neighbour from number 42!

On the other end of the scale we have seen, filmed, photographed and presented evidence which would convince the most liberal of judges that an affair was going on. But sometimes even that is not enough. We always inform clients that we will not be waiting in a wardrobe to get the evidence you require.

During these types of investigations the proof is the ‘time and opportunity’. If person A meets person B at a salubrious location such as a Hotel in Cardiff and they disappear from view for a time. Then they have the ‘time and opportunity’.

Particularly when they told you they were visiting their sick aunt in Colchester!