Rule 84.Motion for Clarification

Rule 84 exists for the ruling nobody is trying to change and everybody reads differently.

The ground

A party may ask the court to clarify a ruling if the ruling is confusing or is susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation. That is the entire test. Disagreeing with a ruling is not a ground; being unable to tell what it requires is.

Timing, and the two open-ended exceptions

Ordinarily within 6 months after entry, unless good cause is shown for the delay. But if the motion clarifies support obligations or the distribution of retirement benefits, it may be filed at any time.

Those two exceptions are practical rather than doctrinal. A support obligation runs for years and a retirement division may not be implemented until decades later -- often by a Rule 72.1 appointee working from a decree drafted long before. Neither ambiguity surfaces inside six months.

Filing does not extend the time for a notice of appeal, the same caution Rule 35.1 gives for reconsideration.

A one-sided procedure

Unless the court orders otherwise, a party may not file a response, and the court may summarily deny the motion. But it may not grant one without giving the nonmoving party an opportunity to file a written response. The asymmetry is the same design Rule 35.1 uses: a motion going nowhere costs the other side nothing, and a motion that might succeed never succeeds unheard.

The line against Rule 83

Section (d) is emphatic. A party may not combine a clarification motion with a Rule 83 motion, and on a clarification motion the court may not open the judgment or accept additional evidence as it can under Rule 83. Clarification explains what a ruling already means; it does not revisit whether it was right. Rule 82 takes the opposite approach for its own motion, expressly allowing it to be included in a Rule 83 motion -- so the two are worth keeping straight.