Family cases often turn on material somebody believed was gone for good. We examine devices that stand on a proper lawful footing — yours, genuinely shared, or instructed through a solicitor — for clients across Swindon, Chippenham, Marlborough and the wider county. Ring the freephone before anything is posted.
Quiet, methodical, defensible. Nothing starts until the free diagnostic is finished and you have approved a written scope; forensic fees are then settled upfront.
Typical family-court situations we assist with from Swindon and across Wiltshire — always on a device there is a right to examine.
Every enquiry starts with entitlement, not technology. We act on three footings only: the device is genuinely yours; it is truly shared property, like the family computer or the backup drive on the bookshelf; or the instruction comes via a solicitor or straight from the court. Guessing a spouse's PIN or slipping into their email is none of those things — the Computer Misuse Act 1990 makes it criminal, courts seldom admit what it produces, and the attempt tends to wound the case it was meant to win. Doing it properly costs a little patience and protects everything.
Where the right to examine exists, the recoverable haul is often substantial: WhatsApp threads, texts and iMessages thought long erased, emails, photographs carrying their embedded dates, documents, spreadsheets and the browsing history around the moments that matter. Timestamps anchor when each item was created, opened or removed. Where disclosure is the issue, we regularly reassemble statements, transfer records and bookkeeping files — useful when the declared position and the visible one refuse to agree.
Most family work arrives through solicitors, and either shape suits us: instructed by one party, or appointed single joint expert for both. In the joint role the agreed device is imaged, the examination keeps strictly inside what the court has permitted, and the report's duty is owed to the court itself, never to the person paying. Findings come in language a judge can lift straight into a judgment, technical workings behind, limits of the evidence stated as candidly as the evidence itself.
If a device you have the right to examine could matter, the strongest thing you can do is nothing. Every unlock writes fresh data over old; app-store recovery tools and helpful relatives having a look do the same with interest, and each muddies the timestamps a court will later weigh. Power it down, put it somewhere safe, and either ring us from anywhere in Wiltshire or have your solicitor make the contact — handling is documented from that point on.
The imaging, hashing and custody routine behind family work is described on the forensic data recovery hub. Forensic fees are paid upfront: £800 + VAT covers the standard investigation and its report, or there is a binary-image and deleted-file extraction at £400 + VAT with no report — both listed on the data recovery cost page. A family computer protected by BitLocker can be opened first where the recovery key is lawfully yours to give.
From a device that is yours, shared, or court-directed — the categories that most often decide family matters.
WhatsApp, iMessage and SMS threads recovered after deletion.
Erased emails, letters, spreadsheets and PDFs.
Deleted photographs, each carrying its embedded date.
Browsing, searches and sign-ins as events unfolded.
Statements, transfers and bookkeeping behind the figures.
Created, opened and deleted times to anchor the account.
We will not covertly open a spouse's private phone, laptop or accounts — not for certainty, not for urgency, not once. That path breaches the Computer Misuse Act 1990, produces material a court would likely refuse, and hands the other side a weapon. Three doors lead into this service: a device of your own, an asset you genuinely share, or an instruction through a solicitor or the family court. There is no fourth.
Family matters begin with a conversation about entitlement, so please ring 0800 689 0668 — or ask your solicitor to get in touch — before any device travels. Once agreed, it comes to our Oxford location by tracked next-day post or in person, with custody recorded from arrival.
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 Oxford 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.
Call us, or route it through your solicitor — lawful footing first, court-ready handling all the way through.