Nevada family-law case summaries

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.

Rod Mason, a U.S. Air Force servicemember, married Martine Cuisenaire while stationed in Belgium. After about eleven years, Mason obtained a divorce in North Carolina, where the couple was living. The North Carolina judgment granted Mason the divorce, gave Cuisenaire primary physical custody of their child, gave Mason summer visitation, and stated that "there are no pending claims for post-separation support, alimony, or equitable distribution." It said nothing about child support. Cuisenaire and the child moved to Belgium; Mason was later stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. After Mason failed to return the child to Belgium at the end of summer 2000, Cuisenaire won a federal court order under the Hague Convention and its implementing legislation requiring the child's return. In February 2002, she asked the Nevada state district court for post-decree child support, alimony, division of assets, and attorney fees, including back child support running from the date of the North Carolina divorce. The Nevada district court awarded her current child support, more than $10,000 in child support arrears under a Nevada statute (NRS 125B.030), and a portion of Mason's military retirement benefits, while denying alimony and setting a further hearing on other assets. On appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court addressed three main questions. First, it held that the North Carolina divorce judgment was entitled to "full faith and credit" - the constitutional requirement that courts of one state respect final judgments of another state unless the judgment was obtained by fraud, without due process, or without jurisdiction. Cuisenaire raised various attacks on the North Carolina judgment on appeal, but because she had not raised those attacks in the district court, the Supreme Court declined to consider them. Second, the court held that the Nevada district court should not have used NRS 125B.030 to award back support. That statute lets a custodial parent recover up to four years of past support when the parents are "separated," but the court concluded the term does not cover parents who are already divorced and are seeking support for the period after the divorce became final. Third, the court held that back child support was nonetheless available - just under North Carolina law rather than the Nevada statute. Because no North Carolina case answered whether a divorce judgment silent on child support counts as a child support order, the court looked to a Nebraska Supreme Court decision, Willers ex rel. Powell v. Willers, and agreed that a divorce decree that says nothing about child support does not prevent a court from later ordering support retroactively to the date of the decree. The court sent the case back to the district court to recalculate the arrears using North Carolina child support guidelines. It declined to review the military retirement issue, which the parties agreed was moot after Mason's death, and directed the district court to hold an evidentiary hearing on survivor benefits, an issue the district court had not yet decided.