Nevada family-law case summaries

This case involves a custody dispute over V., a child born in May 2019 to Terry Rosser and Joan Taylor, who briefly dated but never married. According to the opinion, Rosser initially told Taylor she would be the child's primary caregiver, at one point during the pregnancy tried to self-terminate his parental rights, and eventually stopped communicating with Taylor. He was not present at the birth and sent only three messages over the next year. In April 2020, Rosser filed a complaint seeking joint legal and physical custody; Taylor counterclaimed for primary physical custody, sole legal custody, and child support, including retroactive child support. The trial was continued seven times and finally took place in November 2023. In the intervening years, problems accumulated. Rosser missed a large share of his scheduled parenting time - Taylor estimated more than 100 missed exchanges, over half his parenting time, and Rosser himself testified he missed dozens of visits. He refused to cooperate meaningfully in discovery (the pretrial exchange of evidence), refused during his deposition to say how much money he earned, and sent blank HIPAA authorizations when Taylor requested his medical records. He also fell behind on the $84 monthly temporary child support and refused to pay Taylor directly because he "just didn't want to interact ... with the mother at all." At trial, Rosser - who had been diagnosed with cancer - stipulated (formally agreed) that Taylor would have primary physical custody, but he still sought joint legal custody and requested four days a week of three unsupervised hours of parenting time. He also testified that he "[chose] not to [work], let's put it that way," that his father gave him over "six figures" each year, and that the court could impute (attribute) $4,000 to $5,000 a month of income to him. The district court awarded Taylor primary physical custody, gave Rosser two days a week of four-and-a-half unsupervised hours each, plus every Father's Day and Christmas Day and every other Thanksgiving and Easter, and granted Taylor sole legal custody after finding the parties' communication and cooperation were dysfunctional. It imputed Rosser's income at $8,333 per month, set child support at $1,147 per month, ordered $56,507 in retroactive support, required Rosser to pay the remaining medical expenses of V.'s birth and half of her health insurance, and awarded Taylor $60,000 in attorney fees. The Nevada Court of Appeals affirmed on every issue. It held that substantial evidence - evidence a reasonable person would accept as adequate - supported the finding that the parents' dysfunction rebutted the presumption favoring joint legal custody, pointing to the district court's findings that Rosser was dishonest and not credible, had long absences from V.'s life, and "views disagreement on nearly all issues involving [V.], many of which are trivial, [as] a game." On parenting time, the court noted Rosser had never exercised more than three hours a day and had missed a significant amount of his pretrial time; it also observed that the nine hours per week awarded nearly matched the twelve hours he requested, "which is akin to invited error" - a doctrine barring a party from complaining on appeal about something he asked for. The court rejected Rosser's argument that his schedule was really "sole" rather than "primary" physical custody, explaining that his time is unsupervised, occurs twice weekly, and includes holidays - unlike the highly restrictive arrangements that define sole physical custody. On money issues, the court held the imputed income was supported by Rosser's own testimony, that retroactive support was permitted (Taylor sought it when V. was one year old, and the statute allows recovery of up to four years of support furnished before the action), and that the statute making "[t]he father ... also liable to pay the expenses of the mother's pregnancy and confinement" is clear and unambiguous. Finally, the attorney fee award was upheld because the district court reviewed the required reasonableness factors and awarded significantly less than the $100,434.81 Taylor requested. A request to reassign the case to a different judge was deemed moot because the case was not being remanded and the trial judge no longer serves on the district court bench.

Lillian Hargrove and Thomas Ward had a son together but were never married and never went to court to set up a formal child support order while their son was growing up. After the son turned 18, Hargrove sued Ward, asking the court to order Ward to pay her back child support for the years she had primary care of the child. She made two arguments: (1) Ward had promised in writing (through text messages and a course of conduct) to pay $400 per month, and Nevada law makes such written promises enforceable; and (2) even without an agreement, Nevada law lets a parent who had physical custody recover up to four years of past child support from the other parent. The trial judge said he did not have the power to award child support after the child had already become an adult, and so he denied Hargrove's request. Hargrove appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court split the issues. On the written-promise theory, the Court agreed with the trial judge that Ward never made the kind of clear, specific written promise that the statute requires. Text messages saying things like "Yes" to a single deposit request, or promises to send money "as soon as i can," were either too narrow or too vague to count as an enforceable promise to pay ongoing monthly support. So that part of the trial court's ruling was affirmed. On the retroactive child support theory, however, the Court reversed. It held for the first time that a parent can sue for retroactive (back) child support even after the child has reached the age of majority, as long as the lawsuit is filed within three years of the child's 18th birthday - the same window Nevada gives for filing a paternity action. The recovery is still capped at four years of support immediately before the lawsuit was filed. Because Hargrove filed her case roughly 15 months after her son turned 18, her request was timely, and the trial judge was wrong to say he lacked authority to consider it. The case was sent back to the district court for further proceedings.