TRAENDLY v. BESWICK

ORDERED that the order is reversed insofar as appealed from, on the law, with costs, those branches of the motion are granted, the counterclaims are dismissed, and the defendant is precluded from obtaining disclosure of financial information.

As the Supreme Court correctly found, no common-law marriage could have arisen between the parties by their transient cohabitation in hotels in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. on several occasions from 1980 to 1988, when the plaintiff was legally married to another woman (see, e.g., Matter of Benjamin, 34 N.Y.2d 27, 30 ;Matter of Watts, 31 N.Y.2d 491, 495 ; Matter of Abbott, 189 A.D.2d 709 ;Cross v. Cross, 146 A.D.2d 302 ). Accordingly, all of the defendant's counterclaims, which were based upon this purported common-law relationship, should have been dismissed. In addition, in the absence of a showing by the defendant that a common-law marriage existed, the plaintiff should have been granted a protective order against her demands for financial disclosure (see, e.g., Cross v. Cross, 112 A.D.2d 62 ; Mari v. Strater, 91 A.D.2d 579 ;Colt v. Colt, 261 App. Div. 787 ; see also, Banon v. Banon, 270 N.Y. 484 ).

BRACKEN, J.P., THOMPSON, FRIEDMANN, and SMITH, JJ., concur.