Nevada family-law case summaries

Michael Schaefer and Robyn White were never married but share one child, M.S., who is about six years old. For most of the child's life, the two parents shared parenting without a court order, and the child lived mainly with White. According to the opinion, this was due in part to Schaefer working in North Dakota for about nine months in 2018 and to his struggles with substance abuse in 2019 and 2020. By 2022, Schaefer mostly saw the child on weekends. After tensions grew between Schaefer and White's new boyfriend, Schaefer filed a custody complaint in March 2023 and eventually asked for sole legal and sole physical custody. White answered and asked for the same for herself. In June 2023, the district court issued a temporary order giving each parent joint legal and joint physical custody on a week-on/week-off basis, and — because the child was about to start kindergarten — temporarily ordered that the child attend the public school in Schaefer's neighborhood, Roger M. Bryan Elementary School. The court told the parties this temporary school choice was essentially a "coin flip" that would be revisited at trial. After an evidentiary hearing in November 2023, the district court entered a final custody decree. It gave the parents joint legal and joint physical custody but structured the parenting time so that Schaefer generally had the child from Friday after school until Monday morning, while White had the child during the school week (with White also having the second weekend of each school month). The court ordered that the child attend the school in White's neighborhood, Aggie Roberts Elementary School. On child support, the court ordered Schaefer to pay White $1,118 per month and did not require White to pay anything, declining to assign ("impute") income to White because she was seven or eight months pregnant, her prior bartending job was not suitable that late in pregnancy, and the court found she was not unemployed without good cause. Schaefer appealed and raised three main complaints. First, he argued the schedule was not really "joint" physical custody because he had the child for less than 40 percent of the year. The appeals court explained that the 40-percent figure is a guideline, not a strict rule, and that the real question is what is in the child's best interest — a question the district court had analyzed in detail and that Schaefer did not directly challenge. Second, he argued the district court chose the school based only on drive time and logistics rather than the full list of factors Nevada courts use. The appeals court found that the district court had actually made specific findings on each factor, found most of them neutral or inapplicable given that the child was only five and in kindergarten, and that the only meaningful difference the parties presented was the commute. Third, he argued the court wrongly refused to treat White as voluntarily unemployed. The appeals court held that White's late-stage pregnancy provided good cause for not working as a bartender, and that nothing in the order prevents Schaefer from later asking to change child support if circumstances change. The appeals court affirmed the district court's decision on all three points.