This Week in Family Law Newsletter

The Twin Warm Blankets of Relevance and Proportionality — Part Deux Issues: Nova Scotia and Ontario — Disclosure — Proportionality and Relevance

In the January 15, 2024 (2024-02) edition of TWFL, we discussed Associate Chief Justice O'Neil's decision in McDonald v. McDonald (Mombourquette) (2023), 89 R.F.L. (8th) 108 (N.S. S.C.), which we wrote was "one of those rare decisions where a judge rejected a request for relatively basic financial disclosure (bank and credit card statements) on the basis that the requested information was not sufficiently relevant and proportionate to the issues in the case so as to warrant invading the other party's privacy or forcing them to spend time and money on producing it." But perhaps we spoke too soon in characterizing McDonald as a "rare decision", because in both of this week's cases — Anthony v. Anthony (2024), 1 R.F.L. (9th) 418 (N.S. S.C.) and Frost v. Frost, 2024 CarswellOnt 6692 (S.C.J.) — two experienced family law jurists (Justice Forgeron in Anthony and Justice Jain in Frost) took the time to discuss some of the problems created by overly expansive disclosure requests in family law cases, and to carefully explain why they had decided to largely reject the requests for disclosure that were made in the particular cases before them.

Anthony v. Anthony (2024), 1 R.F.L. (9th) 418 (N.S. S.C.) — Forgeron J.

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