Nevada family-law case summaries

Allison Holmes and Felipe Serrano were never married but have one child together, born in 2019. In 2021, Holmes went to court asking for various things, including primary physical custody (meaning the child would live mainly with her). Serrano responded by asking for joint physical custody (meaning both parents would share custody more equally). The court sent them to mediation, where they worked out and agreed on a parenting plan setting a weekly schedule. Under that schedule, Serrano would have the child from Saturday evening to Monday morning, and again from Wednesday (pickup from daycare) to Thursday morning. Holmes would have the child the rest of the week. Even though they agreed on the schedule itself, they could not agree on what to call the arrangement legally - primary custody for Holmes, or joint custody. So the court adopted the schedule but let both sides file written arguments about the correct label. The district court decided the arrangement was joint physical custody. It reached that conclusion by counting the nights the child would spend with each parent, finding the child would be with Serrano about 156 nights a year, which is roughly 42 percent of the year - above the 40-percent line that courts use as a general guideline for joint custody. The Court of Appeals reversed. It explained that under Nevada Supreme Court decisions, counting nights alone is the wrong way to measure how custody time is split. The correct approach looks at which parent actually supervises the child, provides a home, and makes day-to-day decisions - not simply where the child sleeps on a given night. The appeals court also pointed out that the district court did not make any findings about what was in the child's best interest, which Nevada law treats as the most important factor in deciding the custody designation. The court noted that part of the problem came from how the parties themselves framed their arguments - they asked the court to decide the label purely from the written schedule, without offering details about who actually handled the child's daily care. Even so, the Court of Appeals concluded the district court used the wrong legal standard and sent the case back for further proceedings. The court also noted that Serrano did not file a brief on appeal. While the court could have treated that as a concession that he was wrong and reversed on that basis alone, it chose not to and instead decided the case on the merits.