Legal Question in Family Law in New York
This question is for Mr. David Browde specifically. Mr. Browde, you responded to an earlier question I poised on here about Discovery, stating that the acquisition of documents should not have cost a lot of money, yet one of the things that the judge ordered in our Preliminary Conference Order was that both my spouse and I exchange "copies of all bank records from both joint and individual checking and savings accounts for the last five years" I went to the banks where I had my accounts and obtained these documents, and the banks wanted five to six hundred dollars for each account, thus costing me a few thousand dollars to obtain ALL of my account information for the last five years, especially since some of the accounts were closed.
So I respectfully ask: is two to three thousand dollars not a lot of money to spend on bank records? I know that Discovery is not cheap by any means, but I don't think that three thousand dollars is insignificant. Perhaps to a rich person it is not, but for me three thousand dollars was a great deal of money, especially when 90% of these bank records do not even have any relevance to the disputed asset in my divorce, which is the marital residence.
1 Answer from Attorneys
With all due respect, unless there is something extremely unusual about your accounts, if your bank charged you fees at that level you got taken. Two to three thousand dollars is not "a lot of money" to spend on bank records - it's a completely outrageous sum.
In any event, if those were joint accounts one would think that there is an application to be made for splitting the cost. There is, however, no application you can make that will excuse failure to disclose the records.
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