Nevada family-law case summaries

This case concerns a long-running custody dispute over one child, PJ, born in December 2018. The parents, Maila Likua and Paulino Gomez, married in 2016, lived together in Mesquite, Nevada, and separated in February 2022. Gomez filed for divorce, and a three-year custody battle followed. Early on, the court split the financial issues from the custody issues. In June 2022, the parents agreed to share legal and physical custody on an alternating three-week schedule until a custody trial could be held. After that trial, the court's first custody order (September 2023) gave the parents joint legal custody but gave Likua primary physical custody and permission to move PJ permanently to Molokai, Hawaii, while Gomez kept substantial parenting time. Gomez asked the court to reconsider; that request was denied, and he appealed. While that appeal was pending, Gomez asked the trial court for permission to change custody again, claiming Likua had taken PJ out of preschool and left Hawaii without telling him from April to mid-May 2024, and had concealed the child's whereabouts. Because of the seriousness of those allegations, the trial court issued what is called an "indicative ruling" (a signal that it would reconsider if given the chance), and with the supreme court's approval, the case was sent back to the trial court to address custody and relocation again. After a second custody hearing in November 2024, the trial court reversed course: it gave Gomez primary physical custody (with Likua keeping substantial parenting time) and allowed PJ to move back to Nevada. The court found that PJ's school attendance had dropped, his academic performance lagged behind his peers, and he had ongoing behavioral and focus problems. It also found that communication between the parents had broken down and that Likua had repeatedly interfered with Gomez's parenting time, including on Father's Day 2024, and had traveled with PJ without telling Gomez. On appeal, Likua first argued that the trial court unfairly placed extra duties and burdens on her as the primary custodial parent, violating her right to a fair process. The Court of Appeals disagreed, explaining that both parents fully briefed and argued their positions, presented evidence and witnesses, and made closing arguments. The court noted that, because Gomez was the one asking to change custody, he carried the burden of proof, not Likua. The three passages Likua pointed to simply described the ordinary obligations of a parent who shares legal custody — such as keeping the other parent informed of the child's location and honoring scheduled parenting time, including required FaceTime calls. Likua next argued that the trial court got the changed-circumstances and best-interest analyses wrong. The Court of Appeals applied a deferential standard, meaning it would not second-guess factual findings supported by enough evidence that a reasonable person could accept them. It found that PJ's academic decline and Likua's interference with Gomez's parenting time were enough to support a substantial change in circumstances, and that the trial court had made specific findings on each of the twelve best-interest factors, three of which favored modification. On relocation, the Court of Appeals made an unusual observation: the relocation statute technically did not even apply here, because Gomez (the parent seeking the move) was the non-custodial parent already living in Nevada, and the move was back to Nevada rather than away from it. But because no one raised this point and the trial court treated the statute as a guide, the appeals court reviewed the relocation analysis as instructive and found the trial court's findings were supported by the evidence. Finally, the court declined to address Likua's request for community funds to pay attorney fees, because the orders that actually denied or deferred those fees were not the ones she listed in her notice of appeal. The court also declined to address her claim of judicial bias, finding it moot because the case was being affirmed rather than sent back, and noting that even on the merits the bias claim would fail.