Nevada family-law case summaries

Adam and Chalese Solinger married in May 2012 and had two young children. Adam filed for divorce in January 2019, and the case took nearly three and a half years to resolve. Trial was held over five nonconsecutive days between May 2021 and March 2022, and eight witnesses testified, including a court-appointed custody evaluator, a rebuttal expert Chalese hired, a private investigator, family members, and both parents' romantic partners. After the trial ended but before the divorce decree was entered, Chalese's boyfriend became violent at the home they shared during her parenting time - he broke a television and threatened to keep her from leaving. Chalese took the children, left, and called the police; the boyfriend was arrested for domestic violence, and Chalese obtained a temporary protection order. Chalese asked to present testimony about this incident, which Adam did not oppose, and the district court considered it in deciding custody. The final decree gave the parents joint legal and joint physical custody on a week-on/week-off schedule, ordered Adam to pay child support, required Adam to pay all of the children's health insurance and 65 percent of their other medical, educational, and extracurricular costs, divided the couple's assets and debts, and awarded attorney fees to Chalese. On appeal, the Court of Appeals agreed with Adam on several money-related points but not on custody. The court affirmed the joint physical custody arrangement. Even though it agreed that two of the district court's findings (about alleged domestic violence by Adam and his supposed lack of financial support for Chalese) were mistaken, it concluded those mistakes did not change the outcome because the district court had done a thorough analysis of the child's best-interest factors and a majority still favored Chalese - yet the court still gave Adam joint physical custody. The court also explained that the statute Adam relied on for considering a partner's violent behavior applies to parents or others seeking custody, and Chalese's boyfriend was neither; but the district court was still allowed to consider the boyfriend's behavior as part of the broader best-interest analysis, and it did. The court found several errors in the financial parts of the decree. On child support, the district court said it used Adam's financial disclosure form and his own statements to find his income, but the number it used ($9,799 per month) did not match the figures in the record (Adam reported about $7,839.86 per month, and both sides agreed he earns roughly $94,000 a year). So the court sent the child support calculation back to be redone, with credit for any overpayments. On the 65 percent share of the children's medical, educational, and extracurricular costs, the court found the district court had not adequately explained its reasoning, especially since Adam already pays 100 percent of the children's health insurance and both parents had asked to split unreimbursed medical costs equally. Without a real explanation, the appeals court could not review the decision, so it reversed and sent it back. On the pension, the district court had awarded Chalese a "survivorship interest" in Adam's future state pension (PERS) and required him to choose a payout option that keeps paying a beneficiary after his death. The Court of Appeals explained that a survivorship interest is not itself community property, and giving Chalese this benefit was an unequal division of property because Adam would keep paying into the account for years after the marriage ended while Chalese contributed nothing. The district court had not made the findings needed to justify that unequal division - including why Chalese should be preferred over a possible future spouse or child - so the court reversed that award. Because the attorney-fee award (about $200,875) rested partly on the district court calling Chalese the "prevailing party," and because parts of the decree were being reversed, the court vacated the fee award so it could be reconsidered on remand. The court did reject one of Adam's fee arguments now, holding that Chalese's fee requests complied with the rules because her firms filed memorandums of fees and costs before final judgment. The court declined to reach Adam's other fee-related arguments at this time. On expert witness fees, the court reversed the $4,750 award for Chalese's rebuttal expert because the district court did not properly address all the required factors, particularly given that a neutral expert had already been appointed by the court. Finally, the court refused to order that a different judge handle the case on remand, explaining that a judge's rulings and actions during official proceedings are not, by themselves, grounds for disqualification.

Tara filed for divorce in 2015. At a 2016 settlement conference, the couple agreed to terms for a legal separation while trying to reconcile. Reconciliation failed, and Tara asked the court to enter a divorce decree incorporating the settlement-conference terms. Over Alex's objection, the court entered a divorce decree in February 2017 largely incorporating those terms. Under the decree, Alex had to pay Tara "family support" (combined child support and spousal support) of $2,500 per month or 50 percent of his gross monthly income, whichever was greater, for 15 years. If Tara obtained full-time employment, the support would instead be calculated as 50 percent of the difference between the parties' gross monthly incomes, or $2,500, whichever was greater. In 2019, Alex asked the court to modify the spousal support. He argued he never agreed to those terms as part of a divorce (only a legal separation), that his due process rights were violated because no evidentiary hearing was held before the decree was entered, that the spousal support provision was void, that circumstances had changed, and that Tara should be barred from enforcing the provision because she never obtained full-time employment. Tara opposed and counter-moved to enforce the decree. After an evidentiary hearing, the district court granted each side partial relief: it found the decree was a final judgment that no one had appealed, found that the decree did not actually require Tara to work full-time but that she was willfully underemployed to maximize her spousal support claim (and imputed $2,000 per month in income to her), calculated Alex's arrears, and modified support going forward to a flat $2,500 per month for the remainder of the 15-year term. The Nevada Court of Appeals affirmed across the board. First, it explained that when a court adopts a settlement agreement into a divorce decree, the agreement generally "merges" into the decree - meaning the agreement stops existing as a separate contract, and the parties' rights come solely from the decree itself. That happened here, so neither side could treat the settlement terms as an independent contract. Second, because the divorce decree was a final judgment and Alex never appealed it within the deadline, he could not attack its validity years later - including his due process argument and his complaint that the court never explained the rationale for the support award. Third, the court saw no error in refusing to apply "equitable estoppel" (a doctrine preventing a party from enforcing terms they themselves violated) because the decree never actually required Tara to get a full-time job; it only said how support would be calculated if she did. Fourth, on Tara's cross-appeal, the court held that because the agreement merged into the decree, the support award was modifiable upon a change in circumstances - and Alex's income had roughly doubled (from $6,666 to about $12,000 per month), which under Nevada statute triggers review. Finally, the court declined to second-guess the district court's decision to impute income to Tara, noting that appellate courts do not reweigh evidence or witness credibility.