Q: Is it legal for a husband to search through his wife's phone?
A: There are no laws that make it illegal per se, unless he hacked into it and committed a cyber crime. There are many variables in play here otherwise. That might depend on who holds the account for the phone, who purchased it, and whether any family funds paid the bill for it; or whether it was password protected or left generally available. The smartphones of today are valuable mini computers, and could be seen as a joint marital asset too.
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