Nevada family-law case summaries

Kenneth and Kimberly Einiger divorced in October 2014 through a stipulated divorce decree — a divorce settlement the parties agreed to and the court approved. Under that decree, Kenneth took on significant financial obligations to Kimberly, including alimony of $5,000 per month for life (with a 2.5 percent annual increase), her housing costs, various health-related expenses, a monthly credit card allowance, and continued payments on a two-million-dollar life insurance policy naming Kimberly as the sole beneficiary. Kenneth did not fully comply, including with his alimony obligations. Kimberly asked the court to convert the unpaid amounts into a formal money judgment. While that request was pending, Kimberly learned that Kenneth had listed for sale a condominium he had bought after the divorce, and that a sale was pending. She recorded a lis pendens against that condominium. A lis pendens is a public notice that a piece of real estate is tied up in a lawsuit; it warns potential buyers and lenders about the dispute. Because the notice clouded the condo's title, the pending sale collapsed. Kenneth filed an emergency motion to remove (expunge) the lis pendens. The district court denied the motion but said it would consider lifting the notice if Kenneth could show a real, viable pending sale. Kenneth then asked the Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus — a court order directing a lower court to perform an act the law requires — to force the district court to remove the notice. The Court of Appeals first decided it was appropriate to hear the petition. It explained that an order refusing to expunge a lis pendens cannot ordinarily be appealed directly, and that waiting to appeal at the end of the case would not be an adequate remedy because a lis pendens hurts the property's marketability and can cause substantial hardship to the owner. The court also noted that the district court's willingness to reconsider if Kenneth found a buyer did not fix the immediate harm the notice was causing to the property's title. Turning to the merits, the court held that a lis pendens is only proper when a lawsuit affects the title to or possession of real property. It is not a tool to help collect a money judgment. Here, Kimberly's underlying request was purely about money — reducing unpaid alimony and other financial obligations to a judgment — so it did not justify a lis pendens on Kenneth's separately owned condominium. Kimberly also argued that Kenneth's attempts to sell assets amounted to a fraudulent transfer designed to dodge his obligations. The court acknowledged that a fraudulent-transfer claim can be the kind of action that affects title or possession of real property. But Kimberly had not brought such a claim in her original motion, and her later fraud allegations were too vague — she did not state the circumstances of fraud with the particularity the rules require, and did not identify a specific type of fraud. Because her claims were limited to monetary obligations and she had not adequately alleged fraud, the court concluded the district court had committed a manifest abuse of discretion in refusing to expunge the notice.

David and Christie Stucke entered a domestic partnership in May 2015, married in May 2016, and have two children together. After about two and a half years of marriage, David filed for divorce. The case was, in the district court's words, "hotly contested and litigated," with a five-day trial that included testimony from both spouses and a jointly retained custody expert, psychologist Dr. John Paglini. Both sides asked the appeals court to review parts of the final divorce decree. The disputes fell into two groups: how property was split, and how the children's custody and support were handled. On property, David argued that a house on West Maule Avenue should not have been divided equally. He said he had used his own money — poker winnings earned before the domestic partnership — for the down payment and for repairs, and that the house was meant to stay his. Because the parties acquired the house after entering their domestic partnership, the law presumed it was community property (property both partners own together). David wanted the court to use a formula from an older Nevada case, called Malmquist, to give him credit for his separate contributions. The appeals court explained that this formula only applies when separate property increased in value through community effort, or community property increased in value because of separate contributions. David never argued that his contributions increased the home's value, and he did not provide the supporting evidence needed to run that calculation. So the court upheld the equal division. Christie, in turn, challenged the district court's decision to give David all the sale proceeds from two other houses — one on Birkland Court and one on Grandview Place — as his separate property. For the Birkland property, David had bought it with separate funds and set up a rental business through an LLC; Christie had signed paperwork acknowledging the house was David's separate property. The law says that once property is separate, turning it into community property ("transmutation") must be proven by clear and convincing evidence — a high standard. Christie did not point to anything in the record meeting that standard, so the appeals court upheld that award. For the Grandview property, Christie had signed a quitclaim deed giving up any interest, David had used pre-marriage retirement funds, and there was no evidence community funds paid the mortgage. Nevada law treats a spouse-to-spouse transfer of real estate as a presumed gift that also requires clear and convincing evidence to undo. The appeals court upheld that award too. David also asked that Christie repay the community for "marital waste" — money he claimed she wasted, mostly through gambling and by allegedly devaluing her businesses. The district court found Christie's credibility about her finances "questionable" but also found it "impossible" to figure out how much money, if any, was actually wasted, partly because David's financial summaries were incomplete and he had no accounting background. Because the court could not determine an actual amount of waste, it declined to order reimbursement (though it did make Christie responsible for the businesses' expenses and taxes). The appeals court found this supported by the evidence and upheld it. On custody, David argued that he should not have to share joint physical custody, pointing out that several of the district court's findings were unfavorable to Christie. The expert, Dr. Paglini, had spent extensive time with the family, produced an 88-page report, found both parents fit, and recommended joint physical custody with roughly a 60/40 split in David's favor. Dr. Paglini noted Christie's unsubstantiated allegations that David had raped her and molested their daughter, and said that if the court found she fabricated those claims for advantage in the divorce, David should get primary custody — but Dr. Paglini himself did not reach a conclusion that she had fabricated them. The district court found the allegations unsubstantiated but also could not conclude Christie had fabricated them. It went through each statutory "best interest" factor and adopted Dr. Paglini's recommendation. The appeals court noted that "a different court may have reached a different conclusion," but concluded this was not an abuse of discretion, and it upheld the joint-custody award. It also upheld the label "joint physical custody" for the roughly 60/40 schedule, because Christie had the children at least 40 percent of the time and more than 146 days per year. Finally, David argued the district court should have imputed more income to Christie and ordered her to pay child support. The court found Christie had not accurately reported her income and that her actual income was "almost impossible to discern." It concluded she could earn at least as much as David, set both incomes at David's monthly figure of $8,333, and ordered equal child support, netting to zero. The appeals court pointed out that the district court had actually imputed income to Christie — the opposite of what David claimed — and that David never provided figures showing what the correct amount should have been. Finding the decision supported by the evidence, the court affirmed the entire judgment.