My house originally had electric as follows...
Main supply wires come out of the ground, go thru the electric meter and into a main breaker panel on the outside of the house that has a single large breaker in it that shuts of the entire house. Inside the garage is another panel that is fed from that main breaker and it has all the individual breakers for the various circuits, lights, plugs, A/C, Stove, etc.
Later I had a pool built and by some means the pool people went into the outside panel and tapped into the electric ahead of the big breaker. So flipping that main breaker to off does not de-power the panel for the pool equipment. The pool equipment panel has no "main" breaker but just individual breakers for the different pool things.
OK, so a while ago the breaker in the pool panel that was for the 220v swimming pool pump went bad and it would not stay "on". There was no short or anything. I had turned it off to replace the pump motor (bad bearings) and found it would no longer stay on. Again, I verified no shorts and in fact if I flipped it to on "just right" it would stay on and the pump would run. In mucking around in the panel I realized there was no way to disconnect the panel from the mains and I had no desire to RR the bad breaker with the box live. So I called the local electricians I trust and had them come over to RR the breaker.
They said they have never seen a pool panel that did not tap in after the main house breaker and were concerned it did not meet code. They weren't 100% sure but insisted that I (not they, they wouldn't do it), they insisted that I needed to label the two panels (they are side by side) as 1 of 2 and 2 of 2. They didn't want to even have the label in their handwriting but did want it labeled!
So now finally the question..... Does what I described violate code or is it just unusual?