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.

This case arises from a family-court dispute over a property settlement agreement—the kind of contract that divides property between spouses. One party, Dipesh S. Banker, asked the Court of Appeals to step in before the family court finished its work. He did this by filing a petition for a writ of mandamus or prohibition. A writ of mandamus is a court order forcing a lower court to perform a duty the law requires; a writ of prohibition is a court order stopping a lower court from acting beyond its authority. Dipesh's argument was that the family court did not have jurisdiction—that is, legal authority—to enforce the property settlement agreement. The Court of Appeals explained that these writs are "extraordinary remedies," meaning they are granted only in unusual situations and only when a person has no other adequate way to fix the problem. The person asking for the writ carries the burden of showing that this kind of extraordinary intervention is justified. The court declined to intervene for two reasons. First, Dipesh did not include a copy of the property settlement agreement—the very document at the center of his petition—in the materials he submitted. Second, the court found that the family court had not yet made a final decision about whether it had jurisdiction to enforce the agreement. Instead, the family court had only scheduled an evidentiary hearing, saying it wanted to hear evidence about several things, including what the parties intended when they made the agreement, why they chose not to have the agreement merge into the divorce decree, and what they intended about enforcing the agreement's provisions. Because there was no final ruling to review and because the key document was missing, the court concluded that Dipesh had not shown that writ relief was warranted, and it denied the petition.

Lisa and Chris Cunning married in 2000 and had two children. During the marriage, Lisa homeschooled the children and managed the home while Chris, a commercial real estate agent and licensed stockbroker, handled the family's finances and investments. Lisa alleged that Chris began trading in futures without her knowledge in 2013 and by 2018 had lost all of the couple's shared savings. Both spouses, however, had inherited separate money kept in accounts that stayed intact. Lisa filed for divorce in January 2020. Among other things, she asked the court to award her alimony (ongoing financial support), divide the couple's property and debts, and reimburse her for "marital waste" — a claim that Chris had wasted, hidden, or squandered money that belonged to both of them. She pursued extensive investigation, hiring a forensic accountant, subpoenaing more than 27 financial institutions, and generating over 10,000 pages of records. Because Lisa had no income, the court ordered Chris to pay her $2,000 a month in temporary support during the divorce and to keep paying the shared household expenses. But the court noted that because the couple's shared assets were nearly gone, if Chris was using his own separate money to cover shared expenses, whether he should be paid back would be decided at trial. Later, after the couple's minor child finished high school, the court told Lisa to look for a job to become financially independent. At trial, Lisa did not call her forensic accounting expert and did not use the financial records she had gathered to support her marital waste claim. She told the court she was no longer pursuing that claim and instead tried to enforce what she said was an oral promise by Chris to give her his interest in the family home. Her only evidence of this promise was her own testimony. Chris called a rebuttal expert who testified about the time and cost of responding to Lisa's discovery requests. The court divided the property and debts, reimbursed Chris for the separate money he had contributed, and awarded Lisa alimony of $3,000 a month for 84 months (seven years). It also decided that attorney fees were appropriate for both sides. In later orders, the court required Lisa to pay her own lawyers' liens out of her share of the property and to pay part of Chris's attorney and expert fees because her marital waste claim was, in the court's view, pursued without reasonable grounds. After all the additions and subtractions, Chris received $751,190.75 and Lisa received $322,377.16, with more to come once the family home sold. The Court of Appeals upheld nearly all of the district court's decisions. It agreed that the community debts were properly divided equally, that Chris was entitled to be reimbursed for separate money he spent covering shared expenses (including the temporary support paid to Lisa), that the alimony award was supported by the evidence, and that requiring Lisa to pay attorney fees was within the court's discretion. The appeals court declined to revisit the marital waste and hidden asset claims because Lisa had told the trial court she was dropping them. The one place the appeals court sided with Lisa involved two 2000 Honda XR motorcycles. The court had given Chris the physical motorcycles as his separate property and also awarded him an extra $3,500 as reimbursement for those same motorcycles. Because Chris received both the items themselves and money for them — with no evidence the items had been sold or lost to pay shared expenses — the appeals court reversed that $3,500 add-on and restored the original $115,620 reimbursement figure from the initial decree.

Brittany and Joey divorced in 2016 and share three children. Under a 2021 agreement, the parents shared joint legal custody, but Joey had sole authority over schooling, medical, and extracurricular decisions, primary physical custody of the two older children (J.O. and R.O.), and joint physical custody of the youngest (C.O.) with Brittany. In September 2022, Brittany asked the court to give her sole legal and primary physical custody of all three children. In sworn filings, she alleged, among other things, that Joey gave alcohol to J.O., failed to address J.O.'s suicidal thoughts, called their daughter R.O. "fat" and put her on a restrictive diet, screamed at the children and broke things in the home, and created an environment where the children felt they "walk[ed] on eggshells" around him. Joey denied the allegations and filed his own countermotion seeking primary physical custody of C.O., alleging among other things that Brittany had left the children for three months, entered a relationship with an ex-felon who abused her in front of the children, assaulted Joey's girlfriend, skipped most of her parenting time, and tried to unilaterally pull the children out of their schools. At a November 2022 hearing, the district court ordered the children to be interviewed by the Family Mediation Center (FMC), ordered the parents to attempt mediation, and set a December 2022 "return" hearing. The court indicated that the return hearing would focus on the FMC child interview report and mediation - not the children's custody status. But at the December hearing, after reviewing the interview report and hearing argument, the judge placed both parents under oath, questioned only Joey, and then denied both motions on the spot, concluding neither parent had shown enough of a change in circumstances to justify a full evidentiary hearing (a hearing where the parties can present evidence and question witnesses). The Court of Appeals reversed for two reasons. First, the court held that the district court violated Brittany's due process rights - the constitutional guarantee of notice and a fair opportunity to be heard before important rights are affected. Nothing in the district court's written order or oral statements told the parents that the December hearing might end with a final custody decision, and the hearing itself was one-sided: only Joey was allowed to testify under oath, while Brittany never got the same chance. Second, the appellate court held that both parents' sworn allegations - taken as true, as the law requires at this stage - were detailed enough to establish a "prima facie case" (a threshold showing) for modifying custody, which entitled each of them to a full evidentiary hearing. Because neither parent's allegations conclusively proved the other's false, the district court was not allowed to weigh credibility or pick between the competing stories without holding a hearing. The case goes back to the district court for an evidentiary hearing on whether changing custody serves the children's best interests.

Troy and Monika Askew married in December 2006 and had one child, I.A., born in June 2009. Troy worked as a firefighter and had retirement and deferred compensation accounts; Monika ran a photography business but agreed to stay home with the child after I.A.'s birth. After a March 2020 incident in which Monika slapped Troy and Troy hit her back — with the child present — Monika was arrested and Troy obtained a temporary protective order. The parties later agreed to dissolve that order and shared temporary custody. Monika filed for divorce in March 2020. Several events shaped the case. In September 2020, Troy closed his deferred compensation account, withdrew its $98,672 balance, moved it to a separate account, and wired $65,000 to his mother — he later said $35,000 repaid a loan and $30,000 was for his mother "to hold for him." That same month, the child was hospitalized after expressing suicidal thoughts and told providers her mother had hit her. Monika admitted in the divorce proceedings that she once used a hanger to "swat" the child. Troy then sought another protective order on the child's behalf, but the court did not extend it because the application cited no new violence, only the earlier hanger incident. After a five-day trial, the district court entered a divorce decree in February 2022. On custody, the court found that both parents had committed domestic violence against each other in the March 2020 incident, but that Monika was the "primary physical aggressor," which triggered a legal presumption against giving her joint custody. A "presumption" here is a starting assumption the law makes that a party can overcome with enough evidence. The court examined the statutory "best interest of the child" factors, concluded the presumption had been overcome, and ordered joint physical custody with the child rotating three days at a time between each parent. On money, the court found that Troy's withdrawal from his deferred compensation account was a misappropriation of community funds meant to deprive Monika, which gave a "compelling reason" to divide property unequally. In the end, though, the court divided the community property equally: Monika received about $100,000 more in assets but was ordered to pay Troy roughly $50,010 as an offset to balance things out. The court also awarded Monika alimony of $800 per month for 72 months. The Court of Appeals affirmed on all three issues. On custody, it noted the district court did not separately label the hanger incident as an act of domestic violence against the child (which "was potentially an error"), but concluded any error was harmless because the court still applied the presumption against Monika, considered the hanger incident within its best-interest analysis, found it isolated and remote in time, and found the joint custody arrangement would protect the child. The appellate court also stressed that it does not reweigh evidence on appeal. On the property division, it explained that the court actually divided property equally after the offset, so Troy suffered no unequal treatment; and that although Troy was not formally served with the Joint Preliminary Injunction, he acknowledged and asked to be bound by it, so any lack of service was harmless. On alimony, the court found no abuse of discretion, holding that even if the district court compared Troy's gross income to Monika's net income, any such error was harmless and the required statutory factors were properly considered.

This case is a dispute between two parents, James Ramseier and Nohelia Moldestad, who were never married but have one child together, named N.R. in the opinion. The child is about eleven years old. The parents had been sharing custody under a 2016 court order that set a parenting-time schedule and required them to agree in writing about the child's extracurricular activities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the parents made a separate written agreement in 2020 for the 2020-2021 school year. That agreement covered how the child would be schooled (homeschooling for fifth grade) and a parenting-time schedule the parents described as each having the child "50% of the time." This 2020 agreement was never filed with the court. When disagreements arose, both parents went back to court. Moldestad asked to change the custody and holiday schedules, to use an app called Our Family Wizard to communicate, and for attorney fees. Ramseier asked the court to decide which middle school the child would attend, to change the schedule and holiday plan, and for attorney fees. They disagreed about which school was best, about the child's participation in synchronized swimming and how it affected Ramseier's time with the child, and about how child support should be calculated. The district court held a hearing and eventually ruled that the child would attend Sig Rogich Middle School (the school in Moldestad's zone), applying a set of ten factors the Nevada Supreme Court laid out in an earlier case, Arcella, for deciding a child's schooling. The court also ordered Ramseier to take the child to synchronized swimming during his parenting time and to share equally in the recurring costs of that activity, on top of his $2,000-per-month child support. On child support, the record showed that Ramseier had agreed (stipulated) to the $2,000 monthly amount. On appeal, Ramseier raised eight arguments, including that the judge was biased, that the court wrongly considered the child's progress at her current school, that the court did not fully analyze his alternative school choices, that tying school to Moldestad's residence was improper, that he should not be forced to take the child to an activity he did not agree to, that the court ignored the 2020 agreement's 50/50 schedule, that child support calculations should have accounted for both parents' household incomes, and that the upward deviation in child support for synchronized swimming was improper. The appeals court rejected each argument. On judicial bias, it found Ramseier had not overcome the presumption that judges are unbiased. On several points, it found he either failed to support his argument with legal authority, failed to object below, or took positions on appeal that contradicted what he had argued or conceded in the trial court (for example, he had stipulated to the child support amount and had testified he supported the swimming activity). On the school-choice order, the court noted that the order was not permanently fixed - it allowed for future modification if Moldestad moved or if the parents could not agree - so Ramseier had not shown he was harmed. On the 2020 agreement, the court found the parenting schedules were substantially the same as the 2016 order, that the 2020 agreement was only for a school year that had already ended, and that no substantial change in circumstances justified modification. The court affirmed the district court's judgment in full.

Alfonso Estrada, an attorney living in Los Angeles, and Ida Arzola, who worked in Las Vegas, had a child together, A.E., born in May 2019. After the relationship ended, both parents went to court seeking primary physical custody - the arrangement where one parent has the child most of the time. Alfonso asked for primary custody; Ida asked for primary custody and also for child support (regular payments from one parent to help cover the child's needs). While the case was pending, the court set up a temporary schedule of joint physical custody, with the parents exchanging the child in Barstow, California, each week. During that temporary period, Alfonso was ordered to pay Ida $1,583 per month in support plus $5,000 in attorney fees, reflecting that Alfonso earns roughly ten times what Ida makes. After a two-day trial, the district court changed course. It awarded primary physical custody to Alfonso, ordered that the child's "habitual residence" stay in Nevada, and directed Ida to pay Alfonso $400 per month in child support. It also ruled that Alfonso, as the "prevailing party," could recover attorney fees, and later ordered Ida to pay Alfonso $40,000 in combined fees and costs. Ida appealed. The Court of Appeals split its decision into three parts. On custody, the court sided with Alfonso and left the custody award in place. It rejected Ida's argument that Alfonso had to meet a higher legal bar to "modify" custody, explaining that because no prior custody order existed, this was an initial determination, not a modification. It rejected her argument that the arrangement should have been called joint custody, noting that the best interest of the child is the main consideration and that percentage of time is only one factor. It rejected her argument that the court should have considered joint custody even though neither parent asked for it, in part because Ida herself never requested joint custody as an alternative. And it found the court's detailed analysis of the best-interest factors was supported by the evidence. On the relocation argument, the court declined to overturn the custody order. Ida had not raised the relocation issue in the lower court, cited no legal authority showing the relocation statute applied to her situation, and did not show that considering relocation factors would have changed the result. On child support, the court agreed with Ida. The district court had said "no adjustment evidence was provided" that would justify lowering Ida's payment - but its own findings described a large income gap (Alfonso earning about $250,000 a year while Ida attended community college), plus travel costs and Ida's limited ability to pay. Because that evidence supported considering a downward adjustment, the Court of Appeals reversed the support order and sent it back for the district court to apply the deviation factors. On attorney fees and costs, the court also agreed with Ida. The district court had awarded fees based only on Alfonso being the "prevailing party," without citing a legal basis, without making required findings, and without addressing the income disparity between the parties. The statutes Alfonso relied on did not fit the situation, and the order lumped fees and costs together without saying how much was which, making it impossible to review. The Court of Appeals reversed that award and sent it back as well.

This case is about a custody, child-support, and attorney-fee dispute between two parents of a young child. Alfonso Estrada is an attorney living in Los Angeles who met Ida Arzola in 2017 at a Las Vegas strip club where she worked as a dancer. They had a relationship, and a child, A.E., was born in May 2019. After the birth, the relationship became contentious. Alfonso asked the court for primary physical custody (meaning the child would live with him most of the time). Ida asked for primary physical custody too, and she also asked for child support. The parents agreed to share legal custody (decision-making about the child). While the case was pending, the court set up a temporary arrangement where they shared physical custody, exchanging the child each week in Barstow, California, and temporarily ordered Alfonso to pay Ida $1,583 per month in child support plus $5,000 in attorney fees. By this time, Ida was working as a food server earning about one-tenth of Alfonso's salary and had started nursing school. After a two-day trial, the district court awarded primary physical custody to Alfonso on a three-week-on, two-week-off schedule, with two extra weeks for Alfonso during the year. The court kept Nevada as the child's official home ("habitual residence") and set a status check before the child starts school. It also ordered Ida to pay Alfonso $400 per month in child support and awarded Alfonso attorney fees, saying only that he was the "prevailing party." Alfonso later asked for $48,217 in fees and $2,138.77 in costs; the court ultimately ordered Ida to pay a combined $40,000 in fees and costs, without saying how much was fees and how much was costs. Ida appealed. The Court of Appeals reached three main conclusions. First, on custody, the court upheld the district court's decision to give Alfonso primary physical custody. The court rejected Ida's arguments: that this was really a modification of an existing custody arrangement (it was not, because there had been no prior custody determination); that a case called *Bluestein* required treating the arrangement as joint custody (the court explained percentage of time is just one consideration and the child's best interest controls); that the court had to consider joint custody even though neither parent asked for it (Ida had not requested it and could not now complain of an error she helped cause); and that the court misapplied the best-interest factors (the court found the district court's detailed findings were supported by the evidence). Second, on the claim that the court improperly "relocated" the child to California, the court found Ida had not raised this argument below, had not cited supporting authority, and had not shown that a relocation analysis would have changed the outcome. Third, on child support and attorney fees, the court sided with Ida. On child support, the court held the district court should have considered whether to reduce Ida's payment given the large income gap between the parties, and it reversed and sent that issue back. On attorney fees, the court held the award could not stand because the district court gave no legal basis for it and failed to make required findings — including about the income disparity — and because Alfonso's own filings were deficient. The court reversed and remanded the fee-and-cost order.

William and Ammie Wallace married in 2009, had three children, separated in 2017, and divorced in September 2020. In their divorce decree, they agreed that Ammie would have primary physical custody and that William would have the children on weekday afternoons from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., with the parents alternating weekends. According to the opinion, the parents did not actually follow that schedule for a period. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the children were learning from home and both parents were working from home, they used a different, more equal arrangement that William described as joint physical custody with a "2/3/2 timeshare." They kept this up until the children went back to in-person school in spring 2021, at which point they returned to the schedule written in the divorce decree. In June 2021, William asked the court to change the custody order, arguing that the parents had really been sharing custody roughly equally ("de facto joint physical custody") and that keeping that arrangement was in the children's best interest. Ammie asked the court to deny the motion without a hearing, saying William had not shown any substantial change in circumstances affecting the children, who she said were doing well in her care. After a 20-minute hearing without testimony or evidence, the district court denied William's motion. The court found that Ammie had primary physical custody (having the children about 70% of the time) and that William had not shown "adequate cause" for an evidentiary hearing because he had not demonstrated a substantial change in circumstances. The Court of Appeals affirmed. It explained that to change a physical custody order in Nevada, a parent must show both (1) a substantial change in circumstances affecting the child's welfare and (2) that the change serves the child's best interest. The court held that William never argued that returning to the decree's original terms was a substantial change in circumstances, so he waived that point. It also explained that a recent Nevada Supreme Court decision, Romano v. Romano, overruled the part of the older Rivero decision that William relied on - meaning a court no longer has to first decide what kind of custody arrangement exists before deciding whether to modify it. Because William did not adequately show a substantial change in circumstances, his appeal failed.