Nevada family-law case summaries

Dennis and Gabrielle Kogod married in New York in 1991 and eventually settled in Las Vegas. Dennis rose to become Chief Operating Officer of a Fortune 500 healthcare company, earning an average of nearly $14 million per year, while Gabrielle worked part-time as a nurse consultant earning about $55,000 per year. Unbeknownst to Gabrielle, Dennis had also formed a long-term second relationship in southern California, fathered twin daughters with another woman, and supported that household with marital funds. Gabrielle filed for divorce in 2013. By the time the district court entered its decree in 2016, the marital estate was worth roughly $47 million, with about $35 million in community property left to divide. The district court did several things in the decree. It found that Dennis had wasted (or "dissipated") community money on his extramarital relationships, on gifts to his family, and on personal spending that exceeded what he had reported on his financial disclosures. Because of that, it gave Gabrielle a larger share of the community property than Dennis. It also awarded Gabrielle alimony in a lump sum of $1,630,292, even while acknowledging Gabrielle did not actually need alimony to support herself. The court further sanctioned Dennis $19,500 for transactions over $10,000 it considered violations of an automatic order forbidding either spouse from spending money "except in the usual course of business or for the necessities of life," and required Dennis to pay $75,650 of the cost of Gabrielle's forensic accountant. In the end, Gabrielle received nearly $21 million and Dennis received just under $14 million. On appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court took up the case en banc and reached several conclusions. On alimony, the court took the opportunity to clarify Nevada law: alimony does not have to be based on financial need; it can also be awarded to compensate a spouse for economic losses caused by the marriage and divorce, such as a lower earning capacity from sacrifices made for the marriage, or the inability to maintain the standard of living the couple shared. But on the facts here, the court reversed the alimony award. Gabrielle had received mostly cash assets in the property division, which she conceded would generate between $500,000 and $800,000 a year in passive income—far more than enough to cover her roughly $16,000 in monthly expenses and to maintain her marital standard of living. With no real economic need and no loss in earning capacity from the marriage (the district court had found her nursing career did not suffer from the moves), the majority held there was no proper basis for awarding alimony. On the unequal property division, the court agreed with the district court that the roughly $1.85 million Dennis spent on extramarital affairs was dissipation justifying an unequal split, and that approximately $72,200 in non-routine gifts to family during the divorce was also dissipation. But it reversed the portion of the unequal split based on $2,162,451 of Dennis's general overspending categorized by Gabrielle's accountant as "potential community waste not elsewhere classified." The court explained that ordinary overconsumption by a high-earning spouse, without evidence the spending was directed against the marriage, is not the same as dissipation. The court also held that the community estate did not end when the judge orally pronounced the parties divorced; under Nevada law, only the written decree (entered six months later) terminated it. The case was sent back so the district court could account for community property accumulated and any waste during that interval. The court reversed the $19,500 in sanctions, explaining that the preliminary injunction's "usual course of business" language was too vague to support contempt-style sanctions for these wealthy parties; if Dennis's spending was excessive, the right remedy was an unequal division of property, not a per-transaction fine. Finally, it reversed the $75,650 in costs awarded to Gabrielle, because the district court had not identified any statute, rule, or contract authorizing the award and had not justified expert fees above the $1,500 statutory cap. Two justices, Hardesty and Stiglich, dissented from the alimony reversal. They would have upheld the alimony award, arguing the district court carefully applied the statutory factors, considered the income-producing assets Gabrielle received, and properly relied on Shydler v. Shydler for the principle that a spouse should not be forced to deplete a community property share for support.