Divorce; Arbitration; Claim that the arbitrator exceeded his authority by imputing income to the defendant-husband; Principle that property acquired by a spouse before the marriage is considered separate property to the extent of whatever equity the spouse held in it up to the time of the marriage; Korth v. Korth; Commingling of assets; Cunningham v. Cunningham; Arbitrator’s failure to record parts of the proceedings; MCL 600.5077(2); MacIntyre v. MacIntyre; Issue raised for the first time on appeal; Polkton Twp. v. Pellegrom; Principle that a party is not entitled to relief for an error to which that party meaningfully contributed; Farm Credit Servs. of MI’s Heartland, PCA v. Weldon; Purpose of the recording requirement; Harvey v. Harvey; Propriety of dispensing with issue preservation requirements in this case; Napier v. Jacobs

[Unpublished opinion.] The court concluded that there was no error on the face of the arbitration award, and that the factual finding the parties essentially commingled their assets was “entirely permitted under the law.” While the arbitrator did not record the proceedings as required by MCL 600.5077(2), the court declined to provide the defendant-husband any relief on this basis where he raised the issue for the first time on appeal. It was “obvious from the face of the arbitration award that there was substantial evidence that defendant had a much higher income” than he reported. His argument was based on “the assumption that the arbitrator was not permitted by law to consider evidence of his income beyond what he reported.” He did not cite, and the court did not find, any law to that effect. “If anything, the arbitrator gave defendant the benefit of the doubt by imputing to him merely the same amount of income as that of plaintiff.” He also asserted that “the arbitrator was legally obligated to provide him with an offset to his child support obligations based on a likely number of overnights the children would spend with him. Even if that was true, the arbitrator did not obviously make any mistake in concluding that no overnights were likely based on the available evidence.” The fact that he was awarded “reasonable parenting time” did not necessarily constitute a finding that he would exercise it. There was apparently no dispute that he “never actually exercised any parenting time with the children, or at least he exercised no overnight parenting time.” Since there was “nothing inherently impermissible about making a factual finding that the parties commingled their separate assets into a single marital estate, which would then be subject to division,” the court could not find a legal error on the face of the award. Finally, it noted that the purpose of the recording requirement “is to enable courts to review matters of child custody and to ensure the rights and interests of the child or children.” It found it dispositive that defendant did not seek review, or express “any concern about, issues of custody, parenting time, or the rights or interests of the children.” It affirmed the divorce judgment.