Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
San Francisco County Super. Ct. No. 754879
Marchiano, P.J.
Margot R. Solomon in propria persona appeals from the judgment on reserved issues in her marital dissolution action with Robert A. DeGoff. We find no reversible error in the case and affirm the judgment.
I. BACKGROUND
The parties married in November 1997, and separated less than six years later. Solomon filed her petition for dissolution in October 2003. The marriage was dissolved on DeGoff’s motion in June 2005. The parties had no children; they were in their late 50’s when their property issues were tried in October 2006.
Solomon was employed during the marriage as a nursing school professor; DeGoff worked as a self-employed facilities planning consultant. The parties maintained separate finances and, by mutual agreement, lived in separate residences after the first few months of the marriage. DeGoff lived in the home he had bought with his former wife in 1976; he purchased her interest in the home in 1991, following their divorce. During his marriage to Solomon, DeGoff used community funds to pay the mortgage on his home, and he purchased a house in Richmond for his daughter from the prior marriage. Solomon signed a deed relinquishing any interest in the Richmond residence, and DeGoff, his former wife, and the daughter took title to that property as joint tenants.
Solomon was awarded temporary support in November 2005; her requests for attorneys fees in November 2005 and February 2006 were denied. Solomon was represented by nine different attorneys at different points in the case. In June 2006, at the request of Solomon’s eighth attorney, DeGoff agreed to continue the trial on property issues to October 16, 2006. The eighth attorney was discharged in August 2006, and the ninth was substituted in as counsel in September 2006.
On September 12, 2006, the court granted DeGoff’s motion to compel responses to discovery and imposed monetary sanctions on Solomon. On October 2, 2006, Solomon moved to continue the trial and to reopen discovery. DeGoff’s opposition to the motion recounted the discovery he had provided in the case, and was supported by his counsel’s declaration stating that he had provided everything Solomon requested. The court denied Solomon’s motion.
As required by local rules, the parties filed declarations on October 6, 2006, 10 days before trial commenced on October 16, setting forth their testimony. The court rejected Solomon’s “reply and supplemental declaration,” filed on October 16, as untimely. When the trial began, Solomon objected to the matter being heard by a commissioner; the court overruled the objection as untimely. Solomon called DeGoff as a witness and cross-examined him on his declaration; DeGoff declined to cross-examine Solomon on her declaration. In rebuttal to DeGoff’s testimony, Solomon testified among other things that she felt coerced into signing the deed to the Richmond property.
In discussion and argument at trial after the testimony was concluded: DeGoff asked for termination of support, or a firm termination date for support; DeGoff was granted an opportunity to respond to Solomon’s calculations concerning the community’s interest in his home; and the court requested submissions from the parties on the issue of attorney’s fees. The parties thereafter filed further arguments with respect to DeGoff’s residence, and declarations regarding attorney’s fees.
The contested issues were resolved in statements of decision filed in January 2007. The court awarded Solomon a $52,573.40 interest in DeGoff’s home. The court found that Solomon had waived any interest in the Richmond property by signing the deed to it, and that she had agreed to the waiver in exchange for DeGoff’s agreement to forgo any claim to her pension plan. The court ordered DeGoff to pay Solomon spousal support of $500 per month from October 16, 2006 to April 16, 2008, when jurisdiction to order further support would terminate unless Solomon proved that she could not support herself “at a level of at least $5,000 per month through no fault of her own.” The court ordered equalizing payments to Solomon for bank accounts, furniture, and furnishings.
The court denied the parties’ requests for attorney’s fees, observing: “This court has rarely seen the drama presented by this case among the admittedly dramatic family law matters before this Court every day. . . . One issue was fairly complex—that of a methodology for calculating the community interest in the house owned by DeGoff prior to marriage, but not so complex that it should have created fees and costs in the amount declared by both parties. . . . [¶] [A]n examination of the entire file clarifies that it was Solomon’s inability to trust her chosen counsels’ advice and her exaggerated sense of her rights and DeGoff’s obligations to her that drove the costly process.”
Judgment on the statements of decision was filed in May 2007.
II. DISCUSSION
Solomon’s briefs raise or allude to many issues, but her main point of contention is that the attorneys who represented her committed misconduct or malpractice in their handling of her case. As DeGoff notes, while a retained attorney’s “asserted failure to exercise the requisite skill and care may give rise to a legal malpractice action . . . it does not furnish a basis for the reversal of a judgment entered against the client because of such failure . . . .” (Kim v. Orellana (1983) 145 Cal.App.3d 1024, 1028.) Solomon’s arguments against her attorneys are, accordingly, unavailing.
At oral argument, Solomon complained in particular that she did not accept stipulations entered into by counsel on her behalf. The remedy for an improper stipulation is a motion to set aside the stipulation in the trial court that should have been made then and cannot be made now.
Solomon submits that she was prejudiced as to property issues by the bifurcation and adjudication of the parties’ marital status. While no such prejudice is apparent, her remedy would have been an appeal from the judgment of dissolution (In re Marriage of Fink (1976) 54 Cal.App.3d 357, 366), which she failed to pursue. Under appellate law, she cannot now pursue this issue.
Solomon maintains that DeGoff did not comply with her discovery requests, but the court found in its fee ruling that Solomon’s problem with discovery stemmed from her failure to take advantage of the discovery DeGoff provided, not from any dereliction on his part. Solomon does not effectively controvert this finding. Solomon objects that “[t]he Court knew that [her] attorneys had failed to advance discovery,” but “failed to recognize this as misconduct, and . . . characterized this as [her] fault.” The court did not err in its assessment. The court had no duty to ensure that Solomon obtained all of the discovery she felt she needed—that was her counsels’ responsibility, and, again, their perceived failings do not assist her in this appeal.
Solomon argues that the court erroneously excluded her supplemental declaration filed on the date of trial, to which she attached a letter from a psychiatrist indicating that she suffers from “significant bipolar disorder.” As DeGoff argues, if Solomon intended to make her alleged mental illness an issue in the case, she should not have waited until trial to broach the subject. The court could properly exclude the declaration on the ground that it was not timely filed. (See Super. Ct. San Francisco County, Local Rules, rule 11.10.B (rule 11.10.B) [declarations are due 10 calendar days before trial]; Austin B. v. Escondido Union School Dist. (2007) 149 Cal.App.4th 860, 885 [evidentiary rulings are generally discretionary with the trial court].)
Solomon contends that her trial testimony was improperly limited. We disagree. The local rules provided for direct testimony via declaration, with cross-examination at trial. (Rule 11.10.B.) Thus, when DeGoff declined to cross-examine her, Solomon was limited at trial to rebuttal testimony. If she wanted to address additional subjects in her direct testimony, she should have timely filed an expanded declaration but did not do so.
Solomon asks us to reexamine the court’s ruling on the Richmond property, arguing that she did not intend to “gift” the property to DeGoff when she gave him her deed to it, and that the deed was a product of undue influence on DeGoff’s part. However, it is not our role as an appellate court to retry the case. “ ‘It is, of course, the responsibility of the trier of fact to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses and the weight to be given their testimony.’ ” (Blye v. Affonso (1960) 185 Cal.App.2d 241, 243.) Because Solomon’s interest in the Richmond property turned on her credibility and the issue was definitively resolved against her by the trial court, we are not in a position to reevaluate that determination.
Solomon contends that the award of spousal support was based on “an erroneous conceptualization of the Marital Standard of Living,” but the award was properly based on Solomon’s earnings during the marriage. Although Solomon was earning $1,300 less per month at the time of trial than she made during the marriage, the court found that she had “no impediments to maintaining a high level of employment and salary,” and was “experienced and skilled sufficiently to be self-supporting.” Those findings could have justified a denial of support, yet the court determined that DeGoff should be required to cover a portion of the $1,300 monthly shortfall in Solomon’s earnings. The court also rejected DeGoff’s request for an ironclad date for termination of support. The award was reasonable from Solomon’s standpoint, and there was no abuse of the court’s broad discretion in this area (In re Marriage of Morrison (1978) 20 Cal.3d 437, 454).
DeGoff’s brief explains persuasively and at length how Solomon was benefitted by the calculation of her interest in his home. Solomon does not attack this ruling on the merits; rather, she objects that the issue was improperly decided based on evidence submitted after trial. However, as the court noted in its statement of decision, the posttrial submissions were arguments, not evidence.
Solomon likewise objects that the attorney fee issue was improperly determined “from evidence taken out of Court, without the participation of all parties.” What Solomon apparently means by participation of less than all the parties is that “[her personal] declaration was absent” from the posttrial submissions, which included declarations from her trial counsel, and DeGoff and his counsel. Contrary to Solomon’s suspicion, the evidence supporting a fee request may be lodged “at or after a contested trial.” (Hogoboom & King, Cal. Practice Guide: Family Law (The Rutter Group 2007) [¶] 14:203, p. 14-50.13, italics added.) Solomon was still represented by trial counsel when counsel’s declaration was filed, and she participated in the determination through her counsel’s declaration.
We have reviewed the balance of Solomon’s contentions and conclude that they also lack merit in light of the record.
III. DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: Swager, J., Margulies, J.