COA 369648 NEVINE RUEFIEL V JOSEPH RUEFIEL Opinion - Per Curiam - Unpublished 11/18/2025

If this opinion indicates that it is “FOR PUBLICATION,” it is subject to
revision until final publication in the Michigan Appeals Reports.
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S T A T E O F M I C H I G A N
C O U R T O F A P P E A L S
NEVINE RUEFIEL,
Plaintiff-Appellant/Cross-Appellee,
UNPUBLISHED
November 18, 2025
3:28 PM
v No. 369648
Oakland Circuit Court
JOSEPH RUEFIEL, LC No. 2022-511169-DM
Defendant-Appellee/Cross-Appellant.
Before: K. F. KELLY, P.J., and BORRELLO and CAMERON, JJ.
PER CURIAM.
In this lengthy and contentious divorce case, plaintiff appeals as of right the trial court’s
judgment of divorce. Defendant cross-appeals the same order. We affirm.
I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
This case arose after plaintiff filed for divorce in January 2022. According to plaintiff,
defendant had been abusive for years but the final straw that led to her filing for divorce was when
she found him having phone sex via FaceTime with a female employee.
At the outset of the case, the trial court entered ex parte orders for maintaining the status
quo and imposing a mutual restraining order on the parties. Throughout the proceedings, plaintiff
alleged that defendant repeatedly violated these or similar orders, which resulted in plaintiff filing
numerous motions to enforce. The parties agreed to arbitrate certain issues, including status quo
violations. The parties finally proceeded to a bench trial on the matters not sent to arbitration.
Each party listed many proposed witnesses and exhibits, but ultimately only plaintiff, defendant,
and each party’s retained financial expert testified. The trial court found plaintiff’s and defendant’s
testimonies to be self-contradictory and often incredible, and found that both parties had behaved
poorly during the proceedings.
Relevant to the arguments raised on appeal, the trial court found that, while plaintiff alleged
defendant dissipated over $160,000 on the female employee she alleged was his paramour, plaintiff
only proved that defendant dissipated about $20,000 on her. It also found that defendant dissipated
a $50,000 forfeited earnest money deposit for a house in violation of the trial court’s status quo

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orders, and that plaintiff dissipated $15,000 from a bank account that she held jointly with her
brother but removed her name from before filing for divorce. The bulk of the marital estate
concerned defendant’s numerous businesses. The trial court awarded defendant all of his
businesses, as well as an estimated $3.3 to $3.6 million in personal guarantees defendant took on
in support of his businesses. The businesses had an estimated $7.7 million in total outstanding
accounts receivables that the trial court ordered would be equally divided by the parties. After
accounting for the speculative nature of whether all the accounts would actually be collected, the
trial court ruled that any collections on the accounts as they existed by the time of the judgment
would be deposited into defense counsel’s IOLTA and split between the parties on a quarterly
basis. Other divisions at issue in this case include the trial court’s awards of defendant’s original
and amended 2021 tax returns,1 as well as its decision not to award plaintiff any offset for gold
bars she alleged defendant removed from the parties’ safe-deposit box. In total, the trial court
valued the marital estate at about $1,970,000, noting that significant portions of the marital estate
were not liquid or remained in arbitration, and a “substantial amount of financial assets awarded
to either party [were] not yet in existence and await[ed] collections.”
The trial court declined to order defendant to pay plaintiff’s attorney fees because both
parties behaved poorly, which forced the other to incur unnecessary attorney fees. While plaintiff
had demonstrated an inability to pay her attorney fees, the trial court reasoned that she had not
properly demonstrated that defendant had the ability to pay her fees “exceeding $350,000[,]” given
the fact that the majority of the marital estate’s value was speculative and not liquid at the time. It
also found that (1) plaintiff “inflated her financial need for fees by a multi-year unemployment and
(at present) underemployment,” (2) the total amount of fees plaintiff requested included
“impermissible items related to active litigation in front of the arbitrator,” and (3) plaintiff’s
“excessive amount of exhibits compared to her actual arguments at trial caused unnecessary trial
preparation fees.” Because the trial court declined to review plaintiff’s 96-page fee list “on a line-
by-line basis to determine which attorney fees may be permissible” and because plaintiff
“present[ed] her need with unclean hands,” it denied her request for attorney fees.
The trial court did, however, award plaintiff expert witness fees, reasoning:
However, given that [plaintiff’s expert] performed a business valuation and
the income valuation (to which [defendant’s expert] generally concurred) which
formed a cornerstone of the trial discussion, the court will order [defendant] to pay
[plaintiff’s expert’s] fees. Because of the uncertainties of 1) what is actually owed
to [plaintiff’s expert] and 2) whether any of his fee is attributable to matters in
arbitration, the court orders both counsel to undertake a line by line analysis of
[plaintiff’s expert’s] bill. To the extent that any fee is attributable to arbitration, it
shall be removed. [Defendant] shall pay [plaintiff’s expert], and indemnify
[plaintiff], an amount not to exceed $95,700 (after removal of any fees attributable
to arbitration matters) within 180 days of this order’s date.
1 Defendant filed his 2021 tax returns as “married filing separate” which plaintiff alleges was
contrary to the parties’ status quo and in bad faith.

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The parties now appeal.
II. EQUITABLE DIVISION
Both parties first argue that the trial court’s division of the marital estate was unfair to
them. We disagree.
A. STANDARD OF REVIEW
When reviewing a trial court’s dispositional ruling, “this Court must first review the trial
court’s findings of fact for clear error.” Berger v Berger, 277 Mich App 700, 717; 747 NW2d 336
(2008). “A finding is clearly erroneous if, after a review of the entire record, the reviewing court
is left with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake was made.” Id. “The trial court’s factual
findings are accorded substantial deference.” Id. If the trial court’s findings of fact are upheld,
this Court must decide whether the trial court’s dispositional ruling was fair and equitable in light
of those facts.” Id. “This Court will affirm the lower court’s discretionary ruling unless it is left
with the firm conviction that the division was inequitable.” Id. at 717-718.
B. PERSONAL GUARANTIES AND ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLES
The parties both argue the trial court erred by awarding defendant the entire $3.6 million
in personal guaranties and his businesses, and splitting the accounts receivables between the
parties. Plaintiff asserts that the trial court overcounted defendant’s debt, because it was unclear
how much of the debt he would actually end up having to personally pay. She also argues that, by
awarding her half of any future collected accounts receivables, but no interest in the actual
businesses, the trial court rendered her a “silent partner with no control.” She contends the proper
distribution would have been to award her a lump sum of half the value of the accounts receivables
as established by the trial court—$2.5 million. Defendant, on the other hand, argues that the trial
court erred in awarding him all of the debt but awarding plaintiff half of the receivables because,
essentially, this split gives plaintiff the benefit of the businesses without any of the connected
liability. He asserts that both the debt and the accounts receivables are, essentially, a single
business asset, and, therefore, both should be awarded to the business owner—defendant.
While plaintiff claims the trial court’s award gave her no way to actually collect the money,
the trial court’s order provided detailed instructions on how this distribution would work. To the
extent plaintiff claims she cannot enforce this ruling, she remains free to file a motion to enforce.
While it is true the trial court recognized that it did not want to prolong the litigation given the
interest in making divorces final, the fact remains that, as the trial court recognized, the vast
majority of the estate’s assets and debts are speculative at present. Indeed, plaintiff herself agrees
on appeal that she does not expect that defendant will collect all $5 million of the trial court’s
accounts receivables valuation. Yet she nonetheless asks for a front-end distribution of half of a
future, contingent amount that she acknowledges is unlikely to be accurate. The unreasonable
nature of this request is further compounded by the fact that plaintiff not only believes that
defendant should be responsible for all the related business debt, but that he should get a lesser
offset for it given the unlikelihood that defendant will actually be personally responsible for the
full amount.

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Defendant, on the other hand, argues that the trial court gave no legal reasoning for its
award, which is clearly belied by the trial court’s 95-page opinion. Defendant believes that he
either should not have been assigned the entire debt, which he contends is more likely to come due
than the accounts receivables being paid, or should have been given all the accounts receivables.
It is not necessary to get into the weeds of the parties’ arguments regarding which scenario was
more likely—that defendant would have to pay the full amount of the debt or that defendant would
collect the full amount of the receivables—because, as the trial court recognized, both are
speculative. Whether one possibility is more speculative than the other does not negate the fact
that the trial court had to divide an estate when the vast majority of its debts and assets were
dependent on speculative, future events.
As for defendant’s argument that both should be awarded to him, defendant ignores two
important considerations. First, the trial court awarded defendant his businesses, but only split the
accounts receivable that were outstanding at the time between the parties. That is, defendant, as
sole owner of his businesses, is the sole owner of all future accounts receivables that can be used
to pay off the businesses’ debts. Defendant is not being forced to take on 100% of the debt while
netting only 50% of the profit; he is only being forced to forfeit the portion of the profit incurred
while the parties were married—which, by defendant’s own admission, was obtained with
substantial assistance from plaintiff. Second, defendant neglects to address the fact that the trial
court found the parties to be in uneven financial positions. While the trial court attributed some
of this to plaintiff’s voluntary un- or underemployment, it also found that plaintiff substantially
contributed to the marital estate by managing the physical estate and raising the parties’ child while
defendant worked. To award defendant all the accounts receivables—which, again, constituted
the vast majority of the marital estate’s assets—would deprive plaintiff of a major portion of the
marital estate.
In sum, given that the overwhelming majority of the estate’s assets and liabilities relied on
speculative, future events, the trial court awarded defendant the full benefit of his businesses, plus
the liability that came with them, while awarding plaintiff half of the share of the businesses’
profits obtained during the marriage and with her support. Given these facts, “the trial court’s
dispositional ruling was fair and equitable in light of [the] facts.” Berger, 277 Mich App at 717.
C. DISSIPATION
Plaintiff also raises several challenges to the trial court’s dissipation findings. Specifically,
she alleges the trial court erred by failing to properly consider (1) defendant’s various withdrawals
from the parties’ accounts in violation of the court’s orders, (2) the full amount defendant
dissipated on his employee, (3) the gold bars in the safe-deposit box, (4) defendant’s use of marital
funds to defend himself in the domestic violence case,2 (5) defendant’s bad behavior in filing his
original and amended 2021 tax returns, and (6) defendant’s earnest money deposit on a home
during the divorce proceedings. She also argues the trial court erred by considering the joint
account she held with her brother as dissipated assets. We disagree.
2 During the proceedings, defendant was convicted of domestic violence against plaintiff.

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1. WITHDRAWALS
The entirety of plaintiff’s argument as to this issue is:
The Trial Court further declined to add back $159,141.13 in dissipated
funds that Appellee-Husband withdrew from one of the parties’ accounts in clear
violation of the status quo order, and the Trial Court’s reasoning in support of this
decline is legally erroneous. For one, the Trial Court appears to have become a
research attorney for Appellee-Husband, as the Trial Court took it upon itself to
“Google” certain terms on an account statement and then utilize that search to
generate arguments for Appellee-Husband. As with the $50,000 earnest money
deposit, the Trial Court agreed that these withdrawals were a plain violation of the
Trial Court’s order, but the Trial court declined to add the amounts back because
Appellant-Wife failed to meet an illusory burden she did not know she had to meet.
Pursuant to Sands [v Sands, 442 Mich 30; 497 NW2d 493 (1993)], the Trial Court
erred by making these findings and should have counted the $50,000 earnest money
deposit as a positive on Appellee-Husband’s side of the marital balance sheet and
then treated the $151,151.13 [sic] as dissipation of assets in favor of Appellant-
Wife’s portion of the marital estate due to Appellee-Husband’s bad acts (i.e. lying
under oath and violating court orders) during the divorce proceeding. Sands, 442
Mich at 32-33.
The portion of Sands cited by plaintiff addresses a trial court’s failure to “take[] some sort
of punitive action in light of [a husband’s] persistent attempts to conceal assets.” Sands, 442 Mich
at 32-33. Notably, nowhere in her argument does plaintiff actually claim that defendant’s
withdrawal of these funds was in an effort to conceal them from her during the divorce
proceedings. Instead, she solely focuses on the fact that he lied under oath and violated the trial
court’s orders in so doing. She then criticizes the trial court for acting as “a research attorney” for
defendant because it looked up some entries in her withdrawal chart online and found they were
likely utility payments for some real property the parties held in Florida. What plaintiff fails to
address, however, is that the trial court also did not need to look up some of the funds plaintiff
claimed were dissipated because they were facially withdrawals for maintaining the marital
estate—such as payment for a lawn care service. The trial court found plaintiff’s inclusion of this,
and similar withdrawals, to be disingenuous, reasoning: “In other words, a portion of [plaintiff’s]
argument is that [defendant] dissipated funds and violated the court’s order, by spending them on
maintaining the marital estate.”
As for the alleged “illusory burden” that plaintiff did not know she had to meet, this appears
to be plaintiff’s burden of proof. The trial court ultimately determined that, while it was true that
defendant’s withdrawals violated its orders, plaintiff “did not establish that these expenses
represented a dissipation of marital assets.” It is nonsensical for a party in litigation to assume that
he or she does not have to support his or her claims with evidence. One of the trial court’s biggest
problems with the parties in this case was that, despite them submitting massive tomes of purported
evidence, most of the documents did not actually support their allegations. “It is generally well
established that issues of fact in civil cases are to be determined . . . with the burden of persuasion
placed upon the party asserting the claim.” Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mich v Milliken, 422
Mich 1, 89; 367 NW2d 1 (1985). Despite bearing the burden to prove her own claims, plaintiff

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seems to believe the trial court should, in essence, search for proofs to justify her claims for her.
“Trial courts are not the research assistants of litigants; the parties have a duty to fully present their
legal arguments to the court for its resolution of their dispute.” Walters v Nadell, 481 Mich 377,
388; 751 NW2d 431 (2008). Plaintiff failed to prove that the withdrawals were dissipated assets,
and, indeed, fails to make any attempt at proving so on appeal. The trial court, therefore, did not
err by refusing to consider plaintiff’s unproven claims of dissipation with respect to these
withdrawals.
2. ALLEGED PARAMOUR AND GOLD BARS
Plaintiff’s arguments on these points fail for the same reason as her withdrawal argument.
The trial court carefully went through all of the expenditures plaintiff claimed were for defendant’s
alleged paramour and provided a detailed explanation for which expenses she actually proved and
those she did not. On appeal, plaintiff’s arguments for these two dissipation claims is more or less
that defendant did not prove they were not dissipated in the way she proposed. But, again, plaintiff
bore the burden of proving her claims. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Mich, 422 Mich at 89. As
for the parts of defendant’s claims that plaintiff emphasizes are implausible or impossible on
appeal, such as defendant’s contention that he took his paramour on a business trip during a period
in which she was fired, the trial court already considered these expenses were already considered
as dissipated. Because plaintiff did not provide proof to support her claims for the remaining
alleged expenditures on the paramour or gold bars, the trial court did not err in declining to consider
them as dissipated funds.
3. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CASE ATTORNEY FEES
Plaintiff argues that the trial court erred by failing to consider the $20,000 defendant paid
his attorneys in the domestic violence case as dissipated assets. However, nowhere in plaintiff’s
pretrial brief or closing brief does she ever request that the trial court do so. Plaintiff harbored any
alleged error in this respect by failing to raise it in the trial court, and may not now use it as an
appellate parachute. Loutts v Loutts, 298 Mich App 21, 36; 826 NW2d 152 (2012).
4. TAX RETURNS
Plaintiff argues the trial court erred by awarding the total amount of defendant’s original
2021 tax returns to him, and only awarding plaintiff half of his amended 2021 tax returns. As for
the original tax returns, plaintiff acknowledges on appeal that she “proposed for this amount to be
awarded to Appellee-Husband,” but nonetheless argues that the trial court should have “accounted
for it and awarded some equalization” to her. As with the domestic violence attorney fees, plaintiff
never requested any equalization in her closing brief. Again, plaintiff cannot harbor error and then
use it as an appellate parachute. Loutts, 298 Mich App at 36.
As for the amended tax returns, plaintiff did, in fact, request that the trial court award her
the $48,079 being held in defense counsel’s IOLTA, which the trial court recognized. While the
trial court did not provide specific analysis under the amended tax return bullet point, when read
in conjunction with its earlier reasoning, the trial court’s division was fair and equitable in light of
its findings, which themselves were not clearly erroneous. Berger, 277 Mich App at 717. The
trial court found that, “[b]ased upon its ability to judge the parties’ credibility across five days of

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trial,” it believed they “could not work together to file taxes and this division—rather than
subterfuge or acting in secret—prompted their separate filings.” We defer to the trial court’s
“findings of fact stemming from credibility determinations.” Id. at 718. The trial court’s finding
that the parties were simply unable to work together does not leave room for a firm conviction that
a mistake was made. Id. at 717. The parties had a particularly contentious divorce, and often
seemed to be arguing over any issue they could find. While there may be room for doubt as to
defendant’s intentions when filing his original tax returns, the trial court’s finding based on the
facts of the case was not clearly erroneous. Plaintiff’s entire argument on appeal for why she
believes she should get more than half of defendant’s amended tax returns depends on defendant’s
“bad acts in regard to the tax returns[.]” Given that the trial court did not clearly err in finding
there were no bad acts surrounding defendant’s tax returns, plaintiff’s argument fails.
5. EARNEST MONEY DEPOSIT
Plaintiff argues that the trial court “included the $50,000 [earnest money deposit] in the
negative in [defendant’s] column of the marital balance sheet[,]” which “actually treated the
$50,000 as an advance to [plaintiff] when calculating the property division, causing [her] portion
to be $50,000 less than it should have been.” This argument lacks merit. The trial court
unequivocally found that the earnest money deposit was dissipated and treated it as an advance on
defendant’s distribution. The column in which the deposit was included as a negative value
concerns defendant’s “actual portion” of the estate that would be awarded. Therefore,
mathematically, a negative value in his column diminishes the amount of the estate he receives,
and, as a result, necessarily increases plaintiff’s share of the estate.
6. JOINT ACCOUNT WITH BROTHER
Plaintiff finally argues the trial court erred by considering the joint account she held with
her brother as dissipated assets and counting it as an advance against her share of the estate. Her
primary arguments are (1) that the money was a gift from her parents and constituted her own,
separate property, and (2) that the account was now solely in her brother’s name and the trial court
therefore lacked jurisdiction over distributing it “even if it was marital property[.]” Plaintiff’s
testimony in this respect undermines her claims. She explicitly testified that she took her name
off the account before she filed because she did not want defendant to access the money. If it were
truly a gift from her parents that constituted her separate property, she would not have needed to
remove her name. Even if her behavior was inadvertent, and the contents of the account truly were
her separate property, all plaintiff had to do was provide evidence to the trial court to support this
claim. But, as the trial court noted, neither party called plaintiff’s brother (or parents, for that
matter) to testify, and plaintiff otherwise provided no evidence to refute defendant’s claim that she
dissipated the funds. Without any evidence beyond the parties’ testimonies, the trial court was left
to determine whether the funds were dissipated based on the parties’ representations and behavior.
On this basis, the trial court was well within reason to consider plaintiff’s attempt to conceal assets
when equitably dividing the marital property. Sands, 442 Mich at 36.
III. ATTORNEY AND EXPERT WITNESS FEES
Plaintiff moved for both attorney and expert witness fees under MCR 3.206(D), which
states:

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(1) A party may, at any time, request that the court order the other party to
pay all or part of the attorney fees and expenses related to the action or a specific
proceeding, including a post-judgment proceeding.
(2) A party who requests attorney fees and expenses must allege facts
sufficient to show that:
(a) the party is unable to bear the expense of the action, including the
expense of engaging in discovery appropriate for the matter, and that the other party
is able to pay, or
(b) the attorney fees and expenses were incurred because the other party
refused to comply with a previous court order, despite having the ability to comply,
or engaged in discovery practices in violation of these rules.
The parties dispute the trial court’s decisions to award—or not to award—attorney and expert
witness fees. We disagree with both parties’ arguments.
A. STANDARD OF REVIEW
“We review a trial court’s decision whether to award attorney fees for an abuse of
discretion, the trial court’s findings of fact for clear error, and any questions of law de novo.”
Loutts, 298 Mich App at 24. A trial court’s decision to award expert witness fees is similarly
reviewed for an abuse of discretion. Rickwalt v Richfield Lakes Corp, 246 Mich App 450, 466;
633 NW2d 418 (2001). “An abuse of discretion occurs when the trial court chooses an outcome
falling outside the range of principled outcomes.” Edry v Adelman, 486 Mich 634, 639; 786 NW2d
567 (2010). The proper interpretation of a court rule is a question of law that this Court reviews
de novo. CAM Const v Lake Edgewood Condo Ass’n, 465 Mich 549, 553; 640 NW2d 256 (2002).
B. ATTORNEY FEES
Plaintiff argues the trial court should have awarded her attorney fees because the reasons
it cited to justify denying her request were incorrect and inapplicable. Specifically, she challenges
the trial court’s opinion that she had “unclean hands” by contributing to the length and expense of
the proceedings, because (1) the many motions she filed were necessary because defendant kept
violating the trial court’s orders, and (2) the reason she did not use many of the exhibits and
witnesses she listed was because they concerned issues that were ultimately resolved through
arbitration or stipulation. She also challenges the trial court’s focus on her voluntary un- or
underemployment. Plaintiff takes the trial court’s considerations out of context.
The trial court began its analysis by noting that plaintiff’s exhibits demonstrating how
much she owed her attorneys and expert were unclear, and that it was her “obligation to identify
how much was owed, and to whom, with specificity and accuracy.” It emphasized that a party
seeking fees under MCR 3.206(D)(2)(a) or (b) “must allege facts sufficient to show that” they are
entitled to their sought fees. After noting this concern, the trial court declined to award fees under
MCR 3.206(D)(2)(b) because, while it recognized that there were likely fees incurred because
defendant failed to comply with its orders, plaintiff, too, “acted poorly” throughout the

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proceedings, and likely contributed to the high attorney fees for which the parties found themselves
responsible. During the proceedings, defendant raised concerns that plaintiff was violating the
trial court’s status quo orders by charging much more than she used to on her credit cards because
the arbitrator had ordered defendant to pay them off. Indeed, defendant’s payment—or
nonpayment—of plaintiff’s credit card bills was a recurring problem that was frequently brought
to the trial court or arbitrator. It stands to reason that if defendant’s refusal to pay the full amounts
was because of plaintiff’s violation of the status quo order, the resulting motions plaintiff filed
were, at least partially, her fault. The trial court also noted that it had to issue an order forbidding
the parties from filing motions “on any subject pending before the arbitrator” because plaintiff
frequently filed motions regarding the status quo, despite the parties’ express agreement that status
quo issues were to be arbitrated.
As for the witness and exhibit lists, this reference by the trial court was related to its
frustration that, despite having such a voluminous record, the parties had still failed to prove many
of their claims. While it is certainly likely that many of the exhibits and witnesses plaintiff listed
became irrelevant as the proceedings wore on, this did not negate the fact that plaintiff’s final
updated witness list—filed in the midst of trial—listed a total of 105 witnesses, about half of which
were specific witnesses, or the fact that, “of the 260 separate exhibit files presented to the court[,]”
plaintiff referred to only 50 during the trial. The trial court did not decline to consider defendant’s
bad acts just because plaintiff also behaved poorly; it declined to award fees as a whole on the
basis of defendant’s bad acts because they were not the only bad acts that gave rise to the inflated
fees in this case.
The trial court also declined to award attorney fees under MCR 3.206(D)(2)(a), because,
while plaintiff demonstrated that she was unable to pay the roughly $350,000 in attorney fees she
submitted to the trial court, there remained a question regarding defendant’s ability to pay.
Specifically, the trial court recognized that, while defendant “ha[d] the ability to pay fees on
paper, . . . much of the liquid assets in the estate [were] hypothetical and rel[ied] on future
collections.” As a result, the trial court did “not believe [plaintiff] developed, as a matter of law
based on [defendant’s] actual assets from the trial record,” that defendant had the ability to pay
plaintiff’s “requested fees exceeding $350,000.”
The trial court’s reasoning could have stopped here. But it also took issue with the fact
that, while plaintiff’s claim that she had no income was “factually accurate, it [was] misleading
given [her] voluntary unemployment/underemployment.” Essentially, the trial court noted that,
not only did plaintiff’s own poor behavior and excessive filings contribute to her enlarged attorney
fees, she artificially “inflated her financial need for fees” by refusing to work, or, at least later
during the proceedings, by being voluntarily underemployed. It further noted, perhaps most
importantly, that some of the fees listed pertained to representation her attorneys provided for
arbitration, the cost of which the parties previously agreed they would equally share. The trial
court declined to “review the fee list, remove the entries for which the parties agreed would be
addressed by the arbitrator, and recalculate what amount is properly attributable to matters in [the
trial court].” The trial court’s decision to refuse to award plaintiff attorney fees under either
subsection of MCR 3.206(D)(2) was, therefore, not an abuse of discretion.

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C. EXPERT WITNESS FEES
Defendant, on the other hand, argues it is nonsensical that the trial court denied plaintiff’s
request for attorney fees but granted it for expert fees under the same rule. But this again overlooks
the nuance of the trial court’s reasoning. The trial court’s ultimate decision not to award plaintiff’s
attorney fees relied on the following factors: (1) plaintiff failed to demonstrate that defendant could
afford to pay over $350,000 in fees; (2) plaintiff contributed to the heightened fees through her
own bad behavior and irrelevant submissions; (3) plaintiff’s own inability to pay was, at a
minimum, exacerbated by her refusal to procure employment commensurate with her skills and
education; and (4) plaintiff’s fee list contained impermissible fees mixed in, and, given Factors (1)
through (3), the trial court refused to review it line-by-line to parse out which fees were
permissible.
As for Factor (1), there is a large distinction between whether defendant can pay $350,000
and whether he can pay $95,000. While not explicitly stated, the trial court’s decision, read as a
whole, implies that, while it did not believe plaintiff proved defendant could afford $350,000, it
did believe she had shown that he could at least afford $95,000. Factor (2) is addressed by the
language with which defendant takes most issue. Defendant argues the trial court’s sole reason
for awarding expert fees was because of how helpful plaintiff’s expert was in the trial court’s
decision, and “nothing in MCR 3.206(D)(2) states that fee-shifting is warranted if/when a party’s
expert is particularly helpful to the Court.” Defendant mischaracterizes the trial court’s reasoning.
The trial court found that plaintiff’s expert “performed a business valuation and the income
valuation (to which [defendant’s expert] generally concurred) which formed a cornerstone of the
trial discussion[.]” That is, unlike plaintiff’s numerous filings that were often either based on the
parties’ misconduct, or irrelevant and ultimately unused during the trial, everything plaintiff’s
expert did—and, as a result, all the fees he charged—were relevant, and, indeed, crucial, to the
ultimate disposition of the case. This is why the trial court then ordered the parties to conduct a
line-by-line analysis of plaintiff’s fee list pertaining to her expert; to ensure that defendant was
only required to pay for fees actually incurred for the trial court proceedings. While Factors (1)
through (3) supported the trial court’s rationale for declining to go through—or order the parties
to go through—plaintiff’s 96-page attorney fee list to pull out inapplicable fees (Factor (4)), they
did not warrant the same refusal when considering her expert’s fees.3
Affirmed.
/s/ Kirsten Frank Kelly
/s/ Stephen L. Borrello
/s/ Thomas C. Cameron
3 Factor (3) is entirely inapplicable to the justifiability of plaintiff’s expert’s fees, and need not be
addressed.

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