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****************************************************** The ``officially released'' date that appears near the beginning of each opinion is the date the opinion will be published in the Connecticut Law Journal or the date it was released as a slip opinion. The operative date for the beginning of all time periods for filing postopinion motions and petitions for certification is the ``officially released'' date appearing in the opinion. In no event will any such motions be accepted before the ``officially released'' date. All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecticut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the electronic version of an opinion and the print version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest print version is to be considered authoritative. The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears on the Commission on Official Legal Publications Electronic Bulletin Board Service and in the Connecticut Law Journal and bound volumes of official reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be reproduced and distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publications, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. ****************************************************** MARIO S. ROSATO v. BEATRICE MARTONE ROSATO (SC 16250)
Norcott, Katz, Palmer, Sullivan and Flynn, Js.* Argued September 20, 2000--officially released March 6, 2001 Counsel

Beatrice Martone Rosato, pro se, the defendant. Mark M. Wrenn, with whom, on the brief, was James P. Caulfield, for the appellee (plaintiff).
Opinion

PER CURIAM. This appeal requires that we determine whether the Appellate Court improperly reversed the trial court's judgment of financial orders because of a misreading of the trial court's original order regarding the defendant's interest in the plaintiff's pension annuity benefits. Rosato v. Rosato, 40 Conn. App. 533, 536, 671 A.2d 838 (1996). Because we cannot conclusively determine, in this factually complicated and procedurally complex case, whether the Appellate Court properly reconciled the ambiguous original order of the trial court with an equally ambiguous answer to the plaintiff's motion for clarification of that order, the case must be remanded to the trial court for a new determina-

tion of the financial orders.1 While we recognize that this case has lingered long in our court system, we strongly believe that the interests of justice require no less than a redetermination of the entire ``mosaic'' that constitutes the complete financial order package. Sunbury v. Sunbury, 210 Conn. 170, 175, 553 A.2d 612 (1989). The factual and procedural background of this case is best described as labyrinthine. The plaintiff, Mario Rosato, and the defendant, Beatrice Martone Rosato, had been married for almost twenty-nine years when their marriage was dissolved on July 11, 1988. At the time of the dissolution, the plaintiff was fifty-eight years old and had been an employee of the United States Postal Service (post office) for more than twenty-four years. The plaintiff's base salary was approximately $37,500. Additionally, the plaintiff earned between $8000 and $12,000 in overtime annually. The plaintiff also had a pension with the post office. It is this pension that is at the heart of the present appeal. When first addressing the matter of the plaintiff's pension in the order of dissolution, the trial court, Santos, J., ordered that ``the wife is to retain any benefits in the husband's pension plan which he currently has, as his spouse.''2 (Emphasis added.) The plaintiff retired at the end of 1991, and began to collect his lifetime pension benefits. Believing that she was entitled to a share of this lifetime benefit, the defendant contacted the federal Office of Personnel Management (office) in 1992 to request payment of those benefits. The office declined her request for payment on the ground that the trial court's order did not ``explicitly [divide]'' the plaintiff's civil service retirement benefits. Thereafter, in 1994, the defendant filed a motion for clarification of the trial court's order in which she requested that the court ``set forth the exact percentage interest of the plaintiff's pension which is due to the defendant.'' The trial court's response to this request constitutes another facet of the ambiguity that pervades this appeal. On March 29, 1995, the trial court granted the defendant's motion and indicated that its original intention was to award the defendant 55 percent of the plaintiff's pension benefits.3 The plaintiff appealed claiming that the trial court's original order granted the defendant only a spousal survivorship interest in his pension rather than an interest in his lifetime benefits.4 At the time of the dissolution, the plaintiff claimed that a spousal survivorship interest was all that the defendant was entitled to pursuant to the benefit plan. The plaintiff argued that the trial court's clarification order was an improper modification of the original property award. The Appellate Court reversed the trial court's clarification order concluding that the trial court improperly had modified a property award in violation of General Statutes

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