PRINCIPLES OF PRESERVATION IN DISSOLUTION ACTIONS: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE RECORD YOU NEED FOR APPEAL

You're at an ABA conference, and the chatty gentleman sitting next toyou at the coffee bar is venting about a ruling he recently received from an appellate court. Apparently, the court would not consider the issues he had briefed so carefully, and he was flummoxed. "They said the ?record wasn't adequate,"' he huffed. "Adequate? I explained everything in my appellate brief!" Not knowing a lot about appellate procedures, you sympathize with the fellow, but you are feeling a little inadequate yourself. Preservation can begin as early as the very first filings: the complaint and answer. Some states require spouses to establish claims for relief in those first papers. For example, in South Carolina, the parties generally must request alimony in either their complaint or answer. See Roes 1er v. Roes 1er, 719 S.E.2d 275, 280 (S.C. Ct. App. 2011). Similarly, in North Carolina, you must lay "sufficient basis" to give your spouse "fair notice of the grounds" for an alimony claim, or else risk being denied the alimony requested. See Quesinberry v. Ques in berry, 709 S.E.2d 367, 377-78 (N.C. Ct. App. 2011). Although there are exceptions to pleading rules and dissolution courts will stretch to apply equity when compliance with the rules is less than perfect, it is not worth risking whether an appellate court will be as accommodating as a lower court. Knowledge of local pleading rules is thus crucial to ensuring that all your claims for relief are preserved. Pendente lite motions (in some states called motions for temporary orders or for interim relief) are a very fertile ground for appellate issues and, therefore, key to preserving-or waiving-issues. You must first know whether your state permits interlocutory appeals from pendente lite orders. Some states do-although a subcategory of those states limit the rule to only certain types of orders, e.g., monetary orders-and will enter relief. Other states, although permitting the interlocutory appeal, will not hesitate to dismiss it as moot if the final dissolution order entered while the appeal was pending. Still, some states conclude that pendente lite orders are not "final judgments" because they will be replaced with dissolution orders. Understand how your state treats pendente lite orders so that you can either: (1) file the interlocutory appeal; (2) raise any necessary objections to preserve an appellate argument for a later appeal; or (3) advise your client that there are no appellate options. Lastly, some states pe