Nevada family-law case summaries

Stephanie and Garrett Hatcher were married and have one child together. When Stephanie filed for divorce, both parents asked for joint legal custody, and each wanted to be the parent the child primarily lives with (called "primary physical custody"). In January 2021, the district court granted the divorce and decided the custody arrangement. The court found that Garrett had communicated with Stephanie in an inappropriate manner, so it gave Stephanie primary physical custody and limited Garrett to supervised parenting time on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to noon. That supervised time was to be run by an agency called Family First Services at Garrett's expense until he could show, through a communications app called Talking Parents, that he could communicate properly with Stephanie. The court also entered a "behavior order" telling both parents not to use abusive or foul language. In 2022, Stephanie asked the court to change the arrangement. She wanted sole legal custody, wanted Garrett's parenting time further restricted because he had attended few of his scheduled visits, and asked the court to hold Garrett in contempt (a finding that a person disobeyed a court order) for using inappropriate language, for claiming the child on his federal taxes, and for leaving the former marital home in poor condition. She also asked the court to make Garrett pay her attorney fees. Garrett opposed her request and filed his own motion asking for unsupervised parenting time. He explained that he had temporarily moved to California for financial reasons and could not visit in person during that period, that he tried to talk to the child by phone but said Stephanie would not help make that happen, and that after returning to Nevada the high cost of supervised sessions limited how often he could see the child. He said he wanted more time, and unsupervised time, to build his relationship with the child. After hearings in August and October 2023, the district court reviewed the parties' testimony and their Talking Parents messages. The court found that the most recent objectionable message from Garrett was in January 2023 and that his communications had been appropriate since then. Because the supervised-time requirement had been put in place due to his poor communication, and because Garrett had shown he could now communicate properly, the court found supervised visits were no longer necessary and posed no safety risk to the child. The court kept Stephanie as the primary physical custodian and kept joint legal custody, but gave Garrett unsupervised parenting time of two days per week, including one overnight. The court did not find Garrett's testimony that money was the only reason he missed visits to be credible, declined to hold him in contempt because he had improved his communication, and denied Stephanie's request for attorney fees. On appeal, the Court of Appeals explained that it does not re-decide the facts or re-weigh whether one witness was more believable than another; instead it checks whether the trial court had solid enough evidence to support its findings and whether it decided for the right legal reasons. Applying that limited review, the court concluded that the trial court's findings were supported by the evidence and that the trial court did not abuse its discretion on any of the four issues Stephanie raised. The court therefore affirmed.

Erika and Michael Kragen have three minor children. The family lived in California before moving to Nevada in early August 2022. By January 31, 2023, Erika had moved back to California with the children while Michael stayed in Nevada. Michael then filed for divorce in Nevada; two days later, Erika filed for legal separation and a domestic violence restraining order in California. Both sought custody, which raised the question of which state's courts had the power to decide custody. That question turns on a law called the UCCJEA (the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, which Nevada has adopted). Under that framework, the children's "home state" - generally, the state where the children lived for at least six consecutive months before the case started - has first priority to decide custody. Here, the exact date the family moved to Nevada mattered enormously: if they arrived on August 1, 2022, the children may have lived in Nevada for the required six months; if they arrived on August 3 or 4, they did not. The parties' paperwork conflicted. Michael's filings and a U-Haul receipt suggested an August 1 move; Erika's filings, a different U-Haul receipt, text messages, and a bank statement suggested the family left California on the night of August 3 and arrived in Nevada on August 4. Erika had originally filed a declaration in the California case stating the move date as August 1, but she later amended it to say August 3. The Nevada district court found that the family had lived in Nevada from August 2022 through January 2023 - six months - and concluded it had home state jurisdiction. It based that decision on the parties' declarations, treating Erika's original California declaration (with the August 1 date) as binding. Before determining jurisdiction, the court had also issued a temporary custody order giving both parents joint legal and physical custody on a week-on/week-off schedule - even though a California court had already entered a restraining order temporarily giving Erika sole legal and joint physical custody and limiting Michael to supervised visits. The Nevada court did not take testimony and said it would not consider Erika's domestic violence allegations until trial. The Court of Appeals granted Erika's petition for a writ of mandamus - a court order compelling a lower court to do something it is required to do. The appellate court held that Erika's original California declaration was not a binding "judicial admission" because it was filed in a different case and was later amended; it could be considered as evidence, but it was not conclusive on the disputed move date. Because the evidence about the move date conflicted, the district court was required to hold an evidentiary hearing - a proceeding where witnesses testify and evidence is formally presented - before deciding whether it had jurisdiction. The appellate court also held that the district court lacked authority to issue a temporary custody order before determining it had jurisdiction, and that granting joint custody without any findings on the children's best interest, despite Erika's domestic violence allegations, "was a manifest abuse of discretion." The district court must now vacate its jurisdictional orders, hold an evidentiary hearing, and - if it finds it has jurisdiction - reconsider temporary custody in light of any supported domestic violence allegations.