## Facts

- The parties married in 1951; the husband practiced law and had interests in various corporations and a substantial financial portfolio, while the wife largely served as a homemaker and played a limited role in financial management.
- In 1996, the wife commenced a divorce action seeking equitable distribution and related relief.
- The wife served a CPLR 3120 notice demanding extensive business and personal financial records, often using “all” or “any and all” phrasing and long or unspecified time periods (e.g., “1980 to present”).
- The husband moved for a protective order, arguing the demands were overly broad and burdensome.
- The trial court substantially granted the protective order by limiting production to the five years preceding commencement, permitting additional reasonable and identifiable discovery after the husband’s deposition, and requiring CPLR 3120(b) compliance for entities in which the husband lacked a controlling interest.
- The wife appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court abused its discretion by limiting financial disclosure to the five years preceding commencement of the divorce action.
2. Whether the trial court properly restricted the wife’s CPLR 3120 demands as overly broad and burdensome, including by requiring depositions to identify documents and requiring compliance with CPLR 3120(b) for certain business records.

## Decision

- The Appellate Division affirmed.
- The court held the wife’s document demands were overly burdensome and amounted to an improper fishing expedition.
- The court held the trial court acted within its broad discretion under CPLR 3103(a) to impose a five-year temporal limitation at that stage.
- The court approved the approach of allowing additional, targeted discovery after the husband’s deposition.
- The court upheld the requirement that the wife proceed under CPLR 3120(b) for records of entities in which the husband had less than a controlling interest.

## Legal Principles

- In matrimonial actions, parties are generally entitled to broad financial disclosure, but not to unreasonable demands.
- Under CPLR 3103(a), courts have broad discretion to issue protective orders and limit disclosure to prevent unreasonable annoyance, expense, disadvantage, or other prejudice, including by imposing time limits.
- CPLR 3120 demands should be tailored to reasonable and identifiable documents; blanket “all” or “any and all” requests may be limited as unduly burdensome and as a fishing expedition.
- A proper sequence for broad financial discovery may require using depositions and related devices to determine what documents exist before serving expansive production demands.
- For records of entities not within a party’s control (including businesses in which the party lacks a controlling interest), discovery must comply with CPLR 3120(b) rather than demanding wholesale production solely from the opposing spouse.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed a protective order that curtailed sweeping matrimonial document demands, holding that broad disclosure rights do not permit unreasonable, burdensome requests and that trial courts may confine discovery temporally, require deposition-based narrowing, and enforce CPLR 3120(b) procedures for noncontrolled business records.


MacKinnon v. MacKinnon, 245 A.D.2d 690, 665 N.Y.S.2d 123 (N.Y. App. Div. 3d Dep’t 1997)