Rule 3.229.Filing Confidential Materials

Every domestic relations file holds material a court needs and the public has no business reading. MCR 3.229 answers that with a duty on the filer rather than a motion practice. Identify the document as confidential when you file it, and the court keeps it out of the legal file. Skip the label, and the protection goes with it.

What the rule covers

Subrule (A) lists the items a party or interested party must identify as confidential when filing:

• verified statements and disclosure forms under MCR 3.206(C);
• child protective services reports;
• psychological evaluations;
• custody evaluations;
• medical, mental health, and academic records of a minor;
• any part of a confidential file under MCR 3.903(A)(3);
• any item designated confidential or nonpublic by statute or court rule;
• any other document that, in the court's discretion, should not be part of the public record.

The last two entries keep the list open. The seventh sweeps in confidentiality created somewhere else, and the eighth leaves the judge room to pull a document out of the public record without needing a category for it.

Nonpublic, not hidden from the other side

Confidential treatment here does not mean one-sided. Subrule (A) requires the items to be served on the other parties in the case. What changes is where the document lives. Subrule (B) says an item filed and identified under subrule (A) is nonpublic and must be maintained separately from the legal file, and that the nonpublic file must be made available for any appellate review. The record on appeal stays whole.

The waiver

Subrule (B) carries the sentence that matters most to whoever hits the file button. The filer waives any claim of confidentiality to an item filed under subrule (A) that the filer does not identify as confidential. The rule puts no screening duty on the clerk and describes no cure for an unlabeled filing. The label is what starts everything else.