In present ultralow-emittance storage ring designs the emittance coupling required for the production of vertically diffraction-limited synchrotron radiation in the hard x-ray regime is achieved and in many cases surpassed by a correction of the orbit and the linear optics alone. However, operating with a vertical emittance lower than required is disadvantageous, since it decreases Touschek lifetime and reduces brightness due to the transverse emittance increase from intrabeam scattering. In this paper we present a scheme consisting of closed vertical dispersion bumps successively excited in each arc of the storage ring by skew quadrupoles that couple horizontal dispersion into the vertical plane to a desired level and thereby raise the vertical emittance in a controlled fashion. A systematic approach to vertical dispersion bumps has been developed that suppresses dispersion and betatron coupling in the straight sections in order to maintain a small projected emittance for insertion devices. In this way, beam lifetime can be significantly increased without negatively impacting insertion device source properties and hence brightness. Using simulation results for the MAX IV 3 GeV storage ring including magnet and alignment imperfections we demonstrate that Touschek lifetime can be increased by more than a factor 2 by adjusting the vertical emittance from 1.3 pm rad (after orbit correction) to 8 pm rad (after application of dispersion bumps) using two to three independent skew quadrupole families all the while ensuring deviations from design optics are restrained to a minimum.