Nevada family-law case summaries

Jeremy and Kelly Herrmann married in 2007 and had two children. In December 2021, Kelly filed for divorce in Nevada, seeking sole legal and primary physical custody. By then Kelly had already moved back to California, while Jeremy still lived in Nevada. In April 2022, the district court entered a default divorce decree that gave Kelly sole legal and primary physical custody and stated that it was in the children's best interests to relocate to California with Kelly. Over the next year, both parents moved out of Nevada. Jeremy filed a change of address in July 2022 indicating a move from Reno to Montana. Kelly filed a change of address in July 2023 indicating a move from California to Pennsylvania. Shortly after Kelly's move, in August 2023, Jeremy filed a motion asking the court to enforce the divorce decree and/or to hold Kelly in contempt, alleging she had relocated the children to Pennsylvania without first getting permission or his consent. At a February 2024 hearing, Jeremy testified he was then in Arizona but not residing there, describing himself as a "fulltime traveler," said he was homeless, and confirmed his address on file was in Montana. Kelly testified she was in Pennsylvania with the children. After the hearing, Kelly filed a custody-modification petition in Pennsylvania, Jeremy filed one in Nevada, and Kelly asked the Nevada court to give up (relinquish) jurisdiction because everyone had left Nevada and proceedings were underway in Pennsylvania. Jeremy asked the Nevada court to hold a conference with the Pennsylvania court to resolve which state should handle the case. The Nevada district court then ruled. On the contempt issue, it found that although Kelly had relocated without seeking the court's permission, Jeremy had not filed the sworn statement (a fact-specific affidavit or declaration) required to support a contempt motion, so the court lacked jurisdiction to find contempt. On the larger jurisdictional question, the court found that once the parents and children no longer lived in Nevada, Nevada lost its "exclusive, continuing jurisdiction" over the custody dispute. After an informal conference with the Pennsylvania court, the two courts agreed Pennsylvania would take jurisdiction, so the Nevada court relinquished the case and denied Jeremy's Nevada custody-modification motion as moot. The Court of Appeals affirmed. It explained that under the law governing which state handles interstate custody cases, Nevada's continuing authority ends when the child, the parents, and anyone acting as a parent no longer live in Nevada. Because nobody disputed that all of them had left Nevada — and had been gone for more than a year before Jeremy filed his August 2023 motion — Nevada had lost that continuing authority. The court noted that Jeremy's complaint about the original decree letting the children move to California could not be reviewed now because he never appealed that decree in time. The court also said Jeremy failed to explain how Kelly's allegedly improper move to Pennsylvania would give Nevada authority to keep handling the case, and he did not point to the relevant statute or any supporting authority. Finally, the court found nothing in the record supporting Jeremy's claim that the district court was corrupt.

Jeremy and Kelly Herrmann were married in 2007 and have two minor children. In April 2022, the district court entered a default divorce decree - a divorce judgment issued after Jeremy failed to participate in the proceedings. Later in 2022, Jeremy filed many motions asking the court to enforce the divorce decree or to hold Kelly in contempt, mostly over how property was divided and over property he said had been left out of the decree, including a Cummins engine and Kelly's pensions. At a November 2022 hearing, Kelly said Jeremy had a federal pension he had not disclosed before the divorce decree was entered, which Jeremy denied. In November 2022, the court resolved 31 of Jeremy's motions, ordering that several mistakenly omitted items be divided equally. The written order mentioned the Cummins engine but did not decide that issue. The court told both parties to file proof of their retirement accounts within 30 days, warning that any claims would be treated as given up if they did not. Jeremy did not file proof of his pension. In January 2023, the court entered an order awarding each party their own pension as separate property. Jeremy then filed a "motion to set aside default judgment," asking the court to undo the pension order, along with seven more motions about withheld, damaged, or omitted property, again including the Cummins engine. The court denied all but one of the motions, found Jeremy was filing piecemeal motions to harass Kelly, and ordered each party to keep any remaining community property in their possession except items specifically awarded to the other in the decree or a prior order. The court also, on its own, set a hearing to consider whether Jeremy should be declared a vexatious litigant. Jeremy appealed. The Court of Appeals ruled on three of Jeremy's challenges and declined to reach others. First, it upheld the denial of his request to undo the pension order, noting he had been given ample time to obtain his pension information but did not do so, did not ask for more time, and did not, on appeal, challenge that finding. Second, on the Cummins engine, the court explained that a party can ask a court to divide an asset mistakenly left out of a divorce decree within three years of discovering the mistake, but Jeremy did not point to evidence showing the engine was an omitted asset rather than part of a vehicle already awarded to Kelly. Third, the court rejected Jeremy's claim of judicial bias, finding he had not shown the bias came from outside the case or reflected the kind of deep-seated antagonism that would make fair judgment impossible. The court also dismissed the appeal to the extent Jeremy tried to appeal from the order merely setting a future vexatious litigant hearing, because no statute or court rule allows an appeal from such an order. Claims about child custody and other matters were not addressed because they related to earlier orders not timely appealed or were not raised below.