Nevada family-law case summaries

Natasha and Michael Neyman married in 2002, had two children, separated in 2006, and divorced in 2015 through an agreed-upon (stipulated) divorce decree. The decree gave Natasha primary physical custody and required Michael to pay child support, the children's extracurricular costs, and two kinds of spousal support (alimony): $3,000 per month in general family support and $2,000 per month in "rehabilitative" alimony to help pay for Natasha's education. To get the rehabilitative alimony, Natasha had to give Michael proof she was enrolled in school. These payments were to run for seven years, starting May 1, 2015, meaning the final payment was due April 20, 2022. Natasha stopped going to school at the end of 2020 because she and the children had health problems, and by January 2021 she was no longer enrolled. She did not give Michael proof of enrollment, but Michael kept paying her $2,000 per month for 15 more months — a total of $30,000. On June 30, 2022 — about two months after the alimony period ended — Natasha filed a motion asking the court to increase child support and family support because Michael's income had gone up sharply, and to recover money she said Michael still owed her. Michael agreed his child support should go up, but said his alimony obligation had ended in May 2022 and that he was not behind on any payments. The district court ruled that it had no power (jurisdiction) to change the alimony because the alimony period had already expired when Natasha filed her motion, and there was no evidence Michael was behind. It raised Michael's monthly child support to $4,035. It also found that Natasha had failed her duty to give proof of school enrollment for 15 months, but that Michael knew or should have known she was no longer in school. Splitting the difference, the court ordered Natasha to repay Michael $15,000 — half of what he had paid during that period — then subtracted $6,500 in attorney fees Michael still owed her, leaving Natasha owing Michael $8,500. The court found neither side was a "prevailing party," so each paid their own fees. On appeal, the Court of Appeals agreed with the district court on most points but reversed the order requiring Natasha to repay the rehabilitative alimony. The court explained that under Nevada law, once an alimony period ends, a court can only modify alimony if the paying spouse was behind ("in arrears") when the motion was filed. Here, the alimony period had ended on April 30, 2022, and Natasha herself had admitted Michael had made all his payments before she filed. The text messages she pointed to as a supposed agreement to push the start date back did not count, because the decree said it could only be changed by a written agreement signed by both parties. The most important reversal concerned the order that Natasha repay $8,500. The court found that Michael never properly asked for that money back. He mentioned in passing that he had overpaid, but he did not formally request reimbursement, and did not say how much, until his pretrial memorandum — filed after Natasha's lawyer had quit, after the discovery period closed, and just two weeks before the hearing. The court concluded this violated Natasha's right to fair notice and a chance to respond (due process). It therefore reversed the repayment order and directed that Natasha receive the full $6,500 in unpaid attorney fees with no reduction. The court also upheld the child support ruling (finding Natasha had not properly argued below that the base amount was too low for the children's needs), upheld the denial of her request to postpone the hearing, and upheld the court's refusal to accept her digital documents, which she needed to bring in physical form so they could be authenticated and so Michael could object.

Rod Mason, a U.S. Air Force servicemember, married Martine Cuisenaire while stationed in Belgium. After about eleven years, Mason obtained a divorce in North Carolina, where the couple was living. The North Carolina judgment granted Mason the divorce, gave Cuisenaire primary physical custody of their child, gave Mason summer visitation, and stated that "there are no pending claims for post-separation support, alimony, or equitable distribution." It said nothing about child support. Cuisenaire and the child moved to Belgium; Mason was later stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. After Mason failed to return the child to Belgium at the end of summer 2000, Cuisenaire won a federal court order under the Hague Convention and its implementing legislation requiring the child's return. In February 2002, she asked the Nevada state district court for post-decree child support, alimony, division of assets, and attorney fees, including back child support running from the date of the North Carolina divorce. The Nevada district court awarded her current child support, more than $10,000 in child support arrears under a Nevada statute (NRS 125B.030), and a portion of Mason's military retirement benefits, while denying alimony and setting a further hearing on other assets. On appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court addressed three main questions. First, it held that the North Carolina divorce judgment was entitled to "full faith and credit" - the constitutional requirement that courts of one state respect final judgments of another state unless the judgment was obtained by fraud, without due process, or without jurisdiction. Cuisenaire raised various attacks on the North Carolina judgment on appeal, but because she had not raised those attacks in the district court, the Supreme Court declined to consider them. Second, the court held that the Nevada district court should not have used NRS 125B.030 to award back support. That statute lets a custodial parent recover up to four years of past support when the parents are "separated," but the court concluded the term does not cover parents who are already divorced and are seeking support for the period after the divorce became final. Third, the court held that back child support was nonetheless available - just under North Carolina law rather than the Nevada statute. Because no North Carolina case answered whether a divorce judgment silent on child support counts as a child support order, the court looked to a Nebraska Supreme Court decision, Willers ex rel. Powell v. Willers, and agreed that a divorce decree that says nothing about child support does not prevent a court from later ordering support retroactively to the date of the decree. The court sent the case back to the district court to recalculate the arrears using North Carolina child support guidelines. It declined to review the military retirement issue, which the parties agreed was moot after Mason's death, and directed the district court to hold an evidentiary hearing on survivor benefits, an issue the district court had not yet decided.