Marriage of Sieber CA6

Filed 8/21/23 Marriage of Sieber CA6 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SIXTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

In re the Marriage of ALBERT and H050755 MIROSLAVA SIEBER. (Santa Cruz County Super. Ct. No. 16FL01126)

ALBERT SIEBER,

Appellant,

v.

MIROSLAVA SIEBER,

Respondent. MEMORANDUM OPINION1 Albert Sieber, representing himself, appeals from a January 2023 order setting spousal support arrears owed by him to respondent Miroslava Sieber.2 Because Albert has not provided an adequate opening brief to enable meaningful appellate review, we affirm. We are required to presume that the trial court’s order is correct. The appellant bears the burden of affirmatively showing an error based on the record presented to the trial court. (Jameson v. Desta (2018) 5 Cal.5th 594, 609 (Jameson).) A clerk’s

1 We resolve this case by memorandum opinion under California Standards of Judicial Administration, section 8.1. (See People v. Garcia (2002) 97 Cal.App.4th 847, 852-855.) 2 As the parties share a surname, we will refer to them by their first names for clarity.

transcript, which is the method Albert elected to use to provide the record on appeal, consists only of the documents designated by an appellant for the trial court clerk to include in the record, and only of documents that were filed or lodged in the trial court at the time the court issued the order being appealed. (See Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.122; Sahadi v. Scheaffer (2007) 155 Cal.App.4th 704, 723.) The appellant’s opening brief must provide a summary of significant facts limited to matters in the record, include record citations in support of factual assertions, identify the relief sought, and explain why the order appealed from is appealable. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.204(a)(1)(C), (a)(2)(A), (a)(2)(C).) The appellant must also include in the brief argument and legal authority to support their contentions. (See Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.204(a)(1)(B).) Albert’s brief does not comply with these requirements. The opening brief consists of unsupported factual assertions that do not cite the record on appeal. The record itself does not include the documents we would need to review the support arrears order. As designated by Albert, the record contains only a January 2023 findings and order after hearing, Albert’s notice of appeal from that order, and Albert’s designation of the record on appeal.3 He did not include any request for order or motion that initiated the support proceedings, any response to that motion, or any evidence the trial court considered in issuing the January 2023 order. Although Albert attached various documents to his notice designating the record on appeal, the only attachment that we might infer was before the trial court in issuing the order appealed from is the stipulation and order filed September 5, 2017. To the extent he attached other documents to which he refers in his appellate brief, there is nothing in the designated record confirming that the documents were lodged or filed with the trial court when it issued the January 2023 order, so we would not consider them. (See Vons Companies, Inc. v. Seabest Foods, Inc. (1996) 14 Cal.4th 434, 444, fn. 3 [in reviewing an order on appeal, the appellate court