Evidence codes and common law evidence principles explicitly enumerate some grounds on which persons may be disqualified from serving as witnesses.

Transamerica Computer Co. v. International Business Machines Corp., 573 F.2d 646, 650-651 (9th Cir. 1978).A client does not waive the attorney-client privilege by disclosing a confidential and protected communication to a third party if the client's disclosure is involuntary or coerced.

Fed. R. Evid. 801(c) advisory committee's note ("The definition follows along familiar lines in including only statements offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. McCormick ? 225; 5 Wigmore ? 1361, 6 id. ? 1766. If the significance of an offered statement lies solely in the fact that it was made, no issue is raised as to the...If some human utterance has legal significance under applicable substantive law and the utterance is offered to establish that a verbal act having such legal significance has taken place, the utterance is not hearsay under Federal Rule of Evidence 801(c) or a "statement" for purposes of Federal Rule of Evidence 801(a)(2) even if the utterance also contains an assertion or appears to contain an an assertion.

United States v. Rakes, 136 F.3d 1, 4 n. 5 (1st Cir. 1998) ("In federal courts, the marital communications privilege typically is forfeited only where both husband and wife are jointly engaged in criminal activity or where the victim is the other spouse or some other family").A crime-fraud exception to the privilege for confidential marital communications does exist and does defeat the privilege if the communication was part of a joint criminal activity or joint fraudulent enterprise by the marital partners.