Nevada family-law case summaries

Herman and Nadine Williams married in 2004 and have four children - three boys (currently 9, 12, and almost 14) and a daughter, A.W., who is the oldest and turns 18 in October 2022. During the marriage, Nadine took out student loans and earned a master's degree in nursing and now works as a nurse. Herman works as a tow truck driver for a company called Copart, earning a fee for each completed tow. Tensions began in 2018. Nadine hit A.W. with a piece of PVC pipe, leaving a scar on the child's head, which led to a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation that closed on the understanding that the children would be in Herman's care. Nadine also committed an act of domestic violence against her own mother, Phyllis Gayle. In March 2019, Herman took the children and left the marital home; Gayle then moved in with Herman, paying him $700 per month in rent. Nadine soon filed for divorce. Before trial, the district court gave Herman temporary physical custody, with Nadine getting weekend time that gradually increased. Over time, A.W. came to prefer living with Nadine, even running away from Herman to be with her, and she stayed with Nadine by her own choice; Herman last spent parenting time with A.W. in January 2020. Interviews conducted by the Family Mediation Center (FMC) showed the children's ratings of Nadine improved over time, reportedly after Nadine stopped using physical punishment when the court told her to do so. The case went to trial in February 2021. The district court decided several issues. On custody, it applied a legal presumption against Nadine because of her acts of domestic violence (a "rebuttable presumption" is a starting assumption that can be overcome by evidence), but concluded she overcame that presumption because she stopped using corporal punishment and the children reported improved relationships with her. The court ordered joint physical custody of all four children. On alimony (financial support paid by one spouse to the other), the court found neither party credible about their income and calculated their incomes from bank records and pay information. It found Herman's income was actually higher on a monthly basis and refused to award him alimony, describing the income gap as "negligible." On debts, the court treated Herman's roughly $75,000 in medical bills and Nadine's roughly $76,000 in student loans as community debt and offset them against each other, assigning each spouse their own debt. It did not divide Nadine's master's degree. Herman appealed. He narrowed his custody challenge to just the three boys, conceding he was not seeking custody of A.W. The appellate court reached four conclusions. First, it upheld the joint physical custody order for the boys, finding no abuse of discretion. Second, it declined to decide whether Nadine's master's degree should have been divided, because Herman never raised that issue at trial - only later in a post-judgment motion - so the point was not preserved for appeal. Third, it found the district court appears to have made an error in calculating Herman's income by counting some money twice: Herman moved money between his checking and savings accounts, and those internal transfers were mistakenly counted as additional income. Because that error may have affected the alimony decision, the court vacated (canceled) the alimony determination and sent it back for a recalculation. Fourth, it declined Herman's invitation to reexamine the district court's credibility findings, explaining that appellate courts generally defer to the trial court, which actually sees and hears the witnesses.