Prevent jQuery Tabs to bind to <ul> elements below the main <ul> element

And I set it to a tabbed control:

$('#mytabs').tabs();

My problem is jQuery UI also converts the <li> elements in <ul id="filter-controls"> into tabs. Is there a way to instruct jQuery UI to only set the <li> children of <ul id="main-tabs"> as the tabs?

Note: I am currently in no position to change <ul id="filter-controls"> into a non-ul element.

Did a hacky solution. I removed <ul id="filter-controls"> and inserted it back after calling tabs()