Nevada family-law case summaries

Cherlyn and Robert Oshiro married in 1999 in Las Vegas. Robert had served in the military, including four years in the Vietnam War, and received a service-connected injury. Throughout the marriage, the couple lived in part on Robert's military disability benefits. After Cherlyn stopped working in 2007 following a car accident and Robert retired in 2013, the couple lived on Robert's military disability benefits and their combined Social Security benefits, with Cherlyn serving as Robert's primary caretaker as his disability worsened. Cherlyn filed for divorce in 2023. The parties resolved how to split their shared property on their own, leaving only the question of alimony - ongoing financial support paid from one ex-spouse to the other - for the trial judge. At the time of trial, Robert received $3,946.25 per month in military disability benefits and $2,071 per month in Social Security benefits; Cherlyn received $998 per month in Social Security benefits. Cherlyn asked for $3,400 per month. Robert argued the court could only look at the couple's Social Security benefits and proposed $536.50 per month. The district court awarded $2,000 per month. Robert appealed. His main argument was that a Nevada statute, NRS 125.165, forbids courts from dividing a veteran's military disability benefits when setting alimony, and that the statute also forbids courts from even considering those benefits in the calculation. He argued the $2,000 award - which would require him to hand over about 96.6 percent of his Social Security income - effectively divided his disability benefits in disguise. The Nevada Supreme Court rejected that reading. The court held that NRS 125.165 prohibits direct actions against the benefits themselves - attaching, levying, seizing, assigning, or dividing them - but does not prohibit a court from considering that those benefits exist and contribute to a divorcing veteran's overall financial picture. The court relied on the plain text of the statute, the legislative history (an earlier draft contained the word "consider" but the legislature deliberately removed it), and the rule that words in a list take meaning from their neighbors - here, all the prohibited verbs describe collection actions, not passive consideration. The court also distinguished two U.S. Supreme Court cases Robert cited, Mansell v. Mansell and Howell v. Howell, explaining that those cases involved community property division and waivers of military retirement pay, not alimony. The court noted that Howell expressly left state courts free to take a veteran's disability benefits into account when evaluating need for alimony, and that the overwhelming majority of state courts allow consideration of such benefits in alimony determinations. Reviewing the $2,000 award itself for abuse of discretion, the court found substantial evidence supported it - the trial court considered both spouses' financial conditions, earning capacities, ages, health, home contributions, and standard of living. The court acknowledged that the award came "just up to that line" because Robert would have to pay nearly all of his Social Security benefits to satisfy it, but observed that the district court did not order him to pay from his disability benefits. The court expressly reserved for another day the harder question of whether NRS 125.165 would invalidate an alimony award that could only be paid by drawing from military disability benefits.