Howard S. v. Lillian S.

Nardelli, J. (dissenting).

I respectfully dissent to the extent that I find, inter alia, that it was premature for the motion court, at this juncture in the proceedings, to rule that defendant wife’s behavior does not, as a matter of law, constitute egregious misconduct for the purposes of equitable distribution under the Domestic Relations Law.

The New York State Legislature, in 1980, enacted the Equitable Distribution Law (EDL) (Domestic Relations Law § 236 [B], as added by L 1980, ch 281, § 9), the adoption of which had been advocated because the traditional common-law theory of property…