He described it as "her laptop", there's a clear demarcation of ownership. I just wonder if those ownership laws of the physical property would overshadow the unauthorised access to material parts of UK's CMA (and it's ilk depending on your jurisdiction). AFAIR it just says unauthorised access nothing about 'of a system not owned by the accused'; indeed there was a case (Court of Appeal case at bottom of http://www.computerevidence.co.uk/Cases/CMA.htm) specifying that it was unlawful access to data on any computer (ie including the one you're entitled to access).
It might serve to consider if your wife had secretly taken lewd pictures that wouldn't give you, as spouse, entitlement [eg because you owned the computer] to access them without her permission.
Just because one owns the computer system doesn't mean one owns, nor has a right of access to, the data. That's quite clear in many areas.
So, what happens if my husband decides that my laptop is also his laptop, and uses it to access to company servers, accounts, and databases? I signed an NDA, he hasn't. Now he has access to intellectual property and trade secrets, he decides to go to a competitor and sell them for the highest price.
Fortunately, the ECPA exists, so even if my security practices were as terrible as the above scenario implies, I'd still have some legal protections.
If I've told him "this is my computer, you're not allowed to access it" and he did, that would violate the ECPA. If I protected it with an easy-to-guess password and he guessed it, that would violate the ECPA. If I had an unprotected computer, and let him use it, but he installed a keylogger to get work passwords, that would violate the ECPA. If I let him access my machine and he uses auto-fill stored passwords in a browser to log into my work email, that's also an ECPA violation.
Not only does this apply to husbands and spouses, but also parents and children.
In addition, the separate/community property laws vary from state to state, and most states allow for common-sense separate property laws within marriage. In most states, my spouse can't use a computer given only to me, or a computer I had before we got married, or a computer I purchased with my own separate assets (what constitutes a "separate asset" is a huge discussion, but you get the idea). You can make a written agreement that "this is separate property" and even if you didn't do that, it would likely be a strong argument in court that an unwritten "separate property" agreement exists for a particular machine, in certain circumstances.
"Just because your wife buys it, it's still yours" is absolutely not an ironclad rule.
Many other states are de facto community property states. There is often some sort of "equitable" division of assets in a divorce. In practical terms this often appears quite similar to the de jure states.
One of my favorite quips was from Tom Arnold, during his second divorce. He said something like "she wants half of half of Roseanne's money".
Can the members of the marriage(spouses?) change that?
Here in Spain some autonomous communities (like the states in USA) have community property as default and some others have asset separation as default but when one gets married can decided which one to use
