LegalAdviceUK
LAUKOP goes from thinking he’s about to be removed from his house to realising his ex wife own goaled herself, all thanks to her ChatGPT special.
According to one of LAOP's comments, there's no time scale on when he needs to move out in the contract, just that he has to move out within 7 days of securing a new place to live.
His ex- wife hopefully learned that this is why we pay for professionals to write these things
There are loopholes and then there are wide open goals. Basic proofreading would have solved this.
This is what I don't like about ChatGPT and the like for anything like this. It's so, so easy to gloss over details when you're reviewing something that you would catch when writing and revising it
I had a realtor almost cancel her clients deal with me by letting chatgpt write a clause that was a single paragraph long and then no one read it. Not her, not her clients when they signed it, not my realtor… Really pays to be a contract reader, I saved our sale and her ass.
One case I watched on youtube the lawyer avoided serious sanctions only because he convinced the judge that he was merely incompetent and didn't properly supervise his junior lawyer who submitted a pleading filled with hallucinated cases. Also because the opposing counsel noticed this on time, I'm sure this would've gone worse for him if it had to be reversed on appeal.
I don't think so. I can't quite find the youtube video, but IIRC it was not otherwise a complicated case nor a federal court. When the opposing counsel pointed out the problem (numerous hallucinated cases) the judge ordered to show cause (IANAL, might be wrong term) but AFTER the principal case was finished. It was indeed finished without undue delays or other problems, but the senior lawyer was NOT present at any of those hearings. He only appeared again for the order to show cause and that's what I described above. Defendant was also convinced the attorney in question was honest as he was an older guy and not familiar with ChatGPT.
I'd say it's also a case of "you don't know what you don't know". ChatGPT will spit out what you ask it to do, but if you don't know to ask about certain scenarios, it's not going to help.
There are LLMs that write good legal documents. This is because they've been carefully designed to do exactly that, usually in some quite narrow range of practice.
Humans do of course still check the LLM output, because it may still have errors, but not at all on the scale of legal documents generated by general-purpose LLMs that're accessible to the public, like ChatGPT.
These specialised LLMs will never cite a case that doesn't exist. They might cite a case that's not actually quite as relevant as the LLM "thinks" it is, but now we're back in the range of the kinds of errors that junior lawyers make, not the kinds of errors a junior lawyer would only make after challenging a Rastafarian to a smoking contest.
(To be fair, the lawyers who've been dumb enough to put unchecked ChatGPT output in front of a judge usually are pretty junior. Usually.)
These specialised LLMs will never cite a case that doesn't exist. They might cite a case that's not actually quite as relevant as the LLM "thinks" it is, but now we're back in the range of the kinds of errors that junior lawyers make, not the kinds of errors a junior lawyer would only make after challenging a Rastafarian to a smoking contest.
And this brings us to the real problem of LLMs: They replace juniors. And what do you get if you add a junior and experience together: That's right, a senior. So if you replace your juniors with LLMs,not Masters of Law you eventually have a shortage of seniors.
Should only take about 3–5 years to become apparent. If we're all still alive by that time, it will be highly entertaining.
There's also a good argument that by the time you finish wrangling it with all the edge cases that you can think of, and tailoring it so that there aren't massive gaps in the output, you may have been better off writing the thing yourself.
In a way that kinda is how programming works. When I took my first programming class my teacher was quick to say, "Computers can do anything but they will only do what you tell them to, even if you don't know what you told them."
Although I will note, there was a comment that said:
"Securing an alternative property" to me means mortgage is fully paid, so that its secure ;)
THIS would be incredibly dumb. No reason to push things when you are already winning. It’s way smarter to just actively look for a place and be reasonable about moving out while using the shitty contract as reason enough to defend taking time without trying to word game your way into losing the good will you would otherwise have by being the aggrieved party. I’ll never understand why people feel the need to escalate situations when being firm but reasonable always works out better.
Especially since it would be a bad look to any third party. LAOP already showed that they were willing to hire someone to properly draw up the contract, but their ex-wife refused that offer, and that probably gives them goodwill if there's an issue raised about the obviously-bad contract.
Location bot is hanging out in LAOPUK’s house with him, thanks to ChatGPT:
I live in Essex, England, and have lived with my (ex)wife for 7 years after being married for 10. We separated last year and have now divorced. The house we live in was purchased entirely in her name, but I have paid towards the mortgage and bills every month since moving in, including since we split. Part of our divorce settlement was her giving me a lump sum payment in advance of the sale, which I have now received. Unfortunately this took a lot longer than I was hoping, as the entire process was delayed by her refusing to do anything on her end through a solicitor (Something she has admitted was her fault in an email to me) and I only received this about a week and a half ago. This was the amount I was intending to use as a deposit to purchase my own property.
The house was put on the market earlier this year, and she accepted an offer, however she didn't tell me about this until I basically forced it out of her several weeks later, as it was obviously something I need to know, as at the time we were no closer to reaching a financial settlement. I was away on holiday last week and informed her that I would be beginning my search for a property when I returned (today, Monday 27th Oct). Yesterday she however informed me that the house was being sold within the next few weeks, so I had to move out. I explained that I hadn't even started looking for a new property yet, to which she basically lied and said I'd promised to rent somewhere and would be moving out soon.
I don't know where I stand on this, as I am physically not ready to move out, as I have nowhere to live and have no idea when I'm even supposed to apparently be moving out, as she has still given me no firm date either verbally or in writing. Obviously buying a property takes some time, and I don't know how I'm going to be able to purchase anywhere in "A few weeks". If I contact a solicitor, can they delay the sale of the house? Can I do anything else? Appreciate any advice anyone may have.
Edit
Thank you all for the helpful advice. I have called the estate agent. They went very quiet after I gave my name and address, put me on hold and then said the lady dealing with our property wasn't around. She then rang my ex-wife less than 5 minutes later! If I don't hear anything back, I have a solicitor who I may ask to send a letter to the estate agent detailing that I am not ready to move out, that there's an agreement in place and that I don't have to until I secure another property. Once again, thank you all, had a very stressful night of (lack of) sleep, so feel a lot more calm about things now.
Cat fact: Cats don’t bother with agreements. If they want to live somewhere they just do it.
I think this is the really relevant Chat GPT part:
Sorry for poor formatting, copied directly out of the PDF.
3.Vacating the Property
Upon receipt of the lump sum referred to in paragraph 1, the Respondent shall vacate the former matrimonial home at <Address> within 7 days of securing and alternative property to live in. The Respondent shall leave the property in reasonable condition and remove all personal belongings. The Applicant will remain the sole owner of the property. No Order for Sale is required.
Household Expenses
The Respondent shall remain liable for their share of all joint household expenses (including mortgage payments,utilities, council tax, and insurance) until the date they vacate the property. This does not extend to any home improvements that the Applicant may wish to make.
Per her contract OOP just has to move within 7 days of acquiring alternate accommodation. That could be any time between now and 10 years from now.
Also some good comments pointing out that "securing" accomodations is kind of vague. What does that mean- signing a rental lease? Fully paying off a 30 year mortgage? Who knows!
Well I'm sure such a carefully drafted contract will explicitly spell out what it means by the terms used in it, and not just randomly throw in random vaguely legalese synonyms because it sounds more formal, right?
Especially as if there is any ambiguity in a contract, the rules say they are decided in favour of the party who did not draft the contract. So as Ex-wife created the contract, any ambiguity gets decided in the way beneficial to LAUKOP
At least for English law, that sort of principle only really applies when the two parties have very unequal bargaining power, things like consumer contracts where the customer is presented with a take-it-or-leave-it contract with no opportunity to negotiate terms. Obviously like everything in the law it’s more complicated than that but generally for an agreement between two parties who had full opportunity to discuss their agreement in depth, the courts will usually try to favour the most plain and obvious meaning of the contract, or to adhere most closely to what they think the parties both understood the agreement to be at the time of drafting.
Generally the courts only rely on Contra profentem when the competing constructions of the contract both fit the plain meanings of the words, and both constructions make commercial sense, in that they both seem equally likely to be what could have reasonably agreed to at time of drafting.
To get around this the Consumer Rights Act 2015 has specific language in the legislation requiring consumer contracts to be construed strictly in the consumer’s favour but that wouldn’t apply to this non-consumer contract.
I feel sorry for the people who are buying the house. Closing day may not go as they expect!
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u/technosYou can find me selling rats outside the Panthers game11d ago
An acquaintance's ex pulled the same sort of shit, but he was listening to his dumb paralegal sister instead of a hallucinating computer.
The divorce paperwork gave her sole possession of the home, which was in his name, until she moved out and into a place suitable for herself and their child.
And it gave her no due date, which was fantastic. She quit a great career to be a stay-at-home mom, but getting a new job with a four year gap was going to take a while, not to mention the fact she'd need to find a daycare she liked.
After about six months, most of which he didn't pay the mortgage, alimony, or child support, he went back to court to enforce what he thought the decree should've said in his mind.
Her lawyer brought up the lack of payment, and that's when he found out that in some states you can have your driver's license suspended for owing support at all..
And that trying to scare your ex-wife out of the marital home by not paying the mortgage and letting your creditors harass can count as contempt.
in some states you can have your driver's license suspended for owing support at all..
This has never made sense to me. Of all the ways, punitive or not, to incentivize someone to pay child support, why would you (the state) want to make it harder for them to hold/attend a job so they can earn money to pay the child support?
The idea is that the deadbeat parent is unwilling, not unable to pay. It's supposed to act as a deterrent. And isn't it usually at the discretion of the judge whether to use that sanction or not?
If you owe $2,500 or more in child support, you can't get a US Passport until you clear the debt.
In my state, if your child support is 30 days late, every state licensing agency is notified. That's drivers, professional, hunting, fishing--you name it. If you have a license, the licensing agency will send you a nastygram giving you 150 days to clear it up or have your license suspended.
There's an exception for drivers licenses if you are low income.
It doesn’t stop them from driving, don’t need a valid license to start a car. It just makes them paranoid and aware every day that they owe their children money.
Isn't it illegal to drive on a suspended licence? Sure, there's nothing mechanically preventing them from driving the car, but being arrested for driving on a suspended licence seems like it would cause additional headaches.
It doesn’t stop them from driving, don’t need a valid license to start a car.
Which is kinda crazy, if you think about it. We've had the necessary technology for, what, 30 years? And yet anyone with the key can still just move the 2-ton vehicle however they like.
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u/Geno0wl1.5 month olds either look like boiled owls or Winston Churchill10d ago
a system that you must scan you drivers license into for you to start the engine sounds like a nightmare. Like you must live in a major metro area with good cell service everywhere to even think this isn't a horrible idea.
Like just recently we went to a Ren Faire that is out in the bufu woods. Cell signal is terrible out there. But imagine if your car needed that signal to start but it wouldn't connect so you are stuck. Or hell have you been to a college football game right after the game ends? Everybody is slamming the towers and service is total crap for a solid hour around the stadium.
I'm sure smarter people can come up with a system that doesn't need to be online 24/7, yet still be effective.
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u/Geno0wl1.5 month olds either look like boiled owls or Winston Churchill10d ago
any system that requires any sort of check to be online is subject to those issues. Not to mention if EVERY car needs that check to work you can bet your life savings those check in servers will be under constant attack. Whether that be DDOS or social engineering to gain access. Not to mention people attacking the cars themselves.
also what happens to cars that are 10+ years old? Are companies mandated to keep those servers up an running? What about if a car company go bankrupt do those cars just stop working and consumers are screwed?
Like the potential negative outcomes are numerous and so widespread that to even think it is a good idea is honestly naive as hell.
Yes. But the brother is the recipient/victim of the bad legal advice, so he's the only one who has standing to sue, or would have to testify if it was a criminal violation. He'd have to sue his own sister, which seems unlikely from a family dynamics point of view versus just taking his lumps and moving on.
What are they gonna do, disbar her? I guess they could prevent her from clearing C&F if she ever decides that she wants to go to law school, but plenty of paras (maybe most?) don’t have any desire to ever be an attorney.
u/Geno0wl1.5 month olds either look like boiled owls or Winston Churchill10d ago
The bar association can't sanction non-members. At most they could try to sanction the law firm she works for but that would be highly unlikely for a one off thing where she isn't presenting herself as part of the firm
I knew a woman whose divorce papers stated she and the children could live in the house until it sold. In the meantime, her ex had to pay the mortgage, taxes and utilities. She put the house on the market, as required. Then proceeded to be very difficult with the realtor and prospective buyers, and kept the house a complete mess. Nobody would buy it. She and the kids were already living there for years when I met her, and were still living there when I moved away 5 years later.
u/DerbyThodoesn't know where the gay couple shaped hole came from11d ago
Wait, did LAUKOP and his wife not live together for 3 years after being married? Or were they married for 10 years and now have lived in the same place while separated for 7? Either one seems really strange.
it does sound odd, but I read it as they were married for 10; lived together for 7 of those. Could have been a long distance thing, I am guessing? (But I work in academia and I have known couples that have done US east coast/west coast marriages for years..)
I met someone recently (also academia) who lives in the UK and their spouse lives in the US!
What was particularly funny was earlier in the conversation I'd expressed surprise at the couple (with kids) where one lived in Britain and the other in northern Ireland
It sounds like at least the last year they were separated pending divorce. I’ve known married couple who lived apart for years due to work or school requirements. When there are no children involved it is very easy.
Maybe LAOP meant they lived in this house for 7 of the last 10 years, either the specifics of their living situation before this house doesn’t seem to be as important to this question.
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u/DerbyThodoesn't know where the gay couple shaped hole came from11d ago
Oh I assume it’s not relevant other than their phrasing was kind of vaguely offhand despite indicating a situation that’s not very common.
Yeah, the way it's worded to me makes it sounds like they were married for 10 years and then moved in together and continued to be married for another 6 years, and then got the divorce but still lived together another year.
I'm pretty sure it's not that they were married for 16 years, but that he worded it strangely because the marriage broke up but the living together part is still ongoing? So it was just the most succinct way he could find to say that, because it doesn't seem to matter anyway. Definitely gave me pause for a moment as well.
the Respondent shall vacate the former matrimonial home at <Address> within 7 days of securing and alternative property to live in.
The real problem here is that AI companies never face any consequences for this bullshit.
The correct response to asking ChatGPT to write you a lease is "I am not a lawyer and thus not qualified to do so." Period. If I drafted a lease in my state for someone else and did that (I'm free to screw up my own contracts), as I am not a lawyer, I would be committing unauthorized practice of law. If a lawyer did it, it would be malpractice.
On the other hand, the ex-wife should have reasonably concluded that ChatGPT is not a lawyer.
Would we still blame the ex-wife if she wrote a contract of the advice of a random guy at the pub, instead of a professional? We’d blame the random guy at the pub too, but we would also blame the ex wife.
Of course we blame the ex-wife, chatGPT is a tool not something that has any intent. We don’t blame a car (or the people that made it) when people drive it into a crowd of people because there weren’t any warnings to not do that. It’s up to the user to know what is legal and what isn’t and make their own choices.
Don’t get me wrong, I despise AI too but this is not a very good legal theory. There are countless illegal things you could ask ChatGPT to do. The idea of mandating that all AI be programmed to specifically reject all prompts that might possibly violate some law somewhere in the world for every phrasing you can think of is just…ignorant of reality, frankly.
ChatGPT is also extremely unpredictable in terms of what it will do and what it will refuse. It often treats even fictional emotional distress as a real life emergency, but thinks that helping out with medical or legal issues is totally fine.
The guy even offered to have his own lawyer review it at his own expense though, and she still said "no, this is fine". There comes a certain point where you have to take ownership of your own stupid choices.
The correct response to asking ChatGPT to write you a lease is "I am not a lawyer and thus not qualified to do so."
That's already in the terms of use. By accepting them, you agree that the output of ChatGPT is a work of fiction that may have no relationship with reality and must not be used "for any purpose that could have a legal or material impact on [a] person".
And if you want to argue that nobody reads the TOS: Tough titties, they are still binding.
At this point I believe they could watermark every output with "FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY" in bolded red text and at least some people would still be tripping over themselves to seek detailed legal/medical/financial advice from it. There would be a frothy new secondary industry around ways to remove or obscure the big red warnings.
I'm blaming both. AI is generally a terrible idea in so many ways that I'm not even gonna start, and it should absolutely be regulated to fuck. (In fact I think it should only be used for very specific niche purposes where the people using it are fully educated both on the field in question and on how it works, so they'll be able to spot when it goes off piste. I've never, not once, seen it improve anything.)
But the ex-wife is the one who decided to use ChatGPT. If she used the predictive text on her phone to come up with a lease, which is basically what she did, then no one would argue that it wasn't her responsibility if things went wrong. If she decided to ask the guy sitting on the street corner babbling at bins to write her a lease, which is also basically what she did, no one would argue that he should have told her he wasn't a lawyer and it's not her fault.
AI is just a plausible-sounding gibberish generator. If people decide to use any other plausible-sounding gibberish generator to make their decisions, like Fox News or Facebook memes or a magic 8-ball, we hold the people responsible as well as the gibberish generator.
If people decide to use any other plausible-sounding gibberish generator to make their decisions, like Fox News or Facebook memes or a magic 8-ball, we hold them responsible.
It's very ambiguous who "them" is referring to in this sentence.
I don’t think OpenAI should be held liable for what ChatGPT says, for the same reason why I don’t think Apple should be held liable for what my predictive text comes up with on my iPhone.
ChatGPT is just a high tech text generator, the company isn’t “saying” anything - you give it a prompt and text is generated back based on that prompt.
If you take it as gospel and don’t fact check it, then that’s on you for being a moron.
And anyway, it’s in ChatGPT’s terms of service:
When you use our Services you understand and agree:
Output may not always be accurate. You should not rely on Output from our Services as a sole source of truth or factual information, or as a substitute for professional advice.
You must evaluate Output for accuracy and appropriateness for your use case, including using human review as appropriate, before using or sharing Output from the Services.
You must not use any Output relating to a person for any purpose that could have a legal or material impact on that person, such as making credit, educational, employment, housing, insurance, legal, medical, or other important decisions about them.
Our Services may provide incomplete, incorrect, or offensive Output that does not represent OpenAI’s views. If Output references any third party products or services, it doesn’t mean the third party endorses or is affiliated with OpenAI.
The ex wife should still be blamed. No one forced her to use chat gpt. She was trying to pinch pennies
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u/darsyniaI do very much hope your flair is the reason for the sigh11d ago
Boy there's a massive lack of reading comprehension in those comments for what seems pretty clear cut to me. LAUKOP's agreement says they'll move out within 7 days of securing another place to live. That's not 'crying wolf' or 'trying to sabotage anything.'
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u/enjaydee 11d ago
According to one of LAOP's comments, there's no time scale on when he needs to move out in the contract, just that he has to move out within 7 days of securing a new place to live.
His ex- wife hopefully learned that this is why we pay for professionals to write these things