Nevada family-law case summaries

Paul and Jennifer Martinez divorced in California in 2015 and share a child, L.M. Jennifer received primary physical custody, and the parents shared joint legal custody. Jennifer later moved with the child to Nevada with court permission, and the case eventually transferred to Nevada courts. After further disputes, the Nevada district court increased Paul's visitation time and ordered Jennifer to pay all the costs of transporting L.M. to and from visits with Paul, reasoning that because Jennifer was the parent who moved away from California, she should bear those costs. Jennifer challenged two parts of that ruling: the order making her pay 100% of travel costs, and the decision to expand Paul's visitation beyond what the parties had specifically asked the court to address. On the travel-cost issue, the Nevada Supreme Court agreed with Jennifer. Nevada has a detailed administrative regulation, NAC 425.150, that lists factors a court must consider before adjusting child support away from the standard formula. One of those factors is the cost of transporting the child for visitation. The Court held that a district court cannot simply impose all travel costs on one parent as a stand-alone order; instead, those costs must be evaluated as part of the overall child support analysis, looking at the child's needs and both parents' financial circumstances. The district court's reliance on the fact that Jennifer had moved years earlier, by itself, was not a proper basis for assigning her all the costs. On the visitation issue, the Court sided with the district court. Although Jennifer argued she did not have fair notice that the court might broadly change the visitation schedule, the Court found she had put visitation squarely before the court (by asking that Paul's visits be supervised), testified at length on the topic, and had the chance to present evidence. The Court also found enough evidence in the record - including doctor notes and Paul's own testimony - to support letting Paul have a standard out-of-state unsupervised visitation schedule. The Court reversed the travel-cost portion of the order and sent the case back to the district court with instructions to apply the NAC 425.150 framework. It affirmed everything else and declined to sanction Jennifer for bringing the appeal.

Alfonso Estrada, an attorney living in Los Angeles, and Ida Arzola, who worked in Las Vegas, had a child together, A.E., born in May 2019. After the relationship ended, both parents went to court seeking primary physical custody - the arrangement where one parent has the child most of the time. Alfonso asked for primary custody; Ida asked for primary custody and also for child support (regular payments from one parent to help cover the child's needs). While the case was pending, the court set up a temporary schedule of joint physical custody, with the parents exchanging the child in Barstow, California, each week. During that temporary period, Alfonso was ordered to pay Ida $1,583 per month in support plus $5,000 in attorney fees, reflecting that Alfonso earns roughly ten times what Ida makes. After a two-day trial, the district court changed course. It awarded primary physical custody to Alfonso, ordered that the child's "habitual residence" stay in Nevada, and directed Ida to pay Alfonso $400 per month in child support. It also ruled that Alfonso, as the "prevailing party," could recover attorney fees, and later ordered Ida to pay Alfonso $40,000 in combined fees and costs. Ida appealed. The Court of Appeals split its decision into three parts. On custody, the court sided with Alfonso and left the custody award in place. It rejected Ida's argument that Alfonso had to meet a higher legal bar to "modify" custody, explaining that because no prior custody order existed, this was an initial determination, not a modification. It rejected her argument that the arrangement should have been called joint custody, noting that the best interest of the child is the main consideration and that percentage of time is only one factor. It rejected her argument that the court should have considered joint custody even though neither parent asked for it, in part because Ida herself never requested joint custody as an alternative. And it found the court's detailed analysis of the best-interest factors was supported by the evidence. On the relocation argument, the court declined to overturn the custody order. Ida had not raised the relocation issue in the lower court, cited no legal authority showing the relocation statute applied to her situation, and did not show that considering relocation factors would have changed the result. On child support, the court agreed with Ida. The district court had said "no adjustment evidence was provided" that would justify lowering Ida's payment - but its own findings described a large income gap (Alfonso earning about $250,000 a year while Ida attended community college), plus travel costs and Ida's limited ability to pay. Because that evidence supported considering a downward adjustment, the Court of Appeals reversed the support order and sent it back for the district court to apply the deviation factors. On attorney fees and costs, the court also agreed with Ida. The district court had awarded fees based only on Alfonso being the "prevailing party," without citing a legal basis, without making required findings, and without addressing the income disparity between the parties. The statutes Alfonso relied on did not fit the situation, and the order lumped fees and costs together without saying how much was which, making it impossible to review. The Court of Appeals reversed that award and sent it back as well.

This case is about a custody, child-support, and attorney-fee dispute between two parents of a young child. Alfonso Estrada is an attorney living in Los Angeles who met Ida Arzola in 2017 at a Las Vegas strip club where she worked as a dancer. They had a relationship, and a child, A.E., was born in May 2019. After the birth, the relationship became contentious. Alfonso asked the court for primary physical custody (meaning the child would live with him most of the time). Ida asked for primary physical custody too, and she also asked for child support. The parents agreed to share legal custody (decision-making about the child). While the case was pending, the court set up a temporary arrangement where they shared physical custody, exchanging the child each week in Barstow, California, and temporarily ordered Alfonso to pay Ida $1,583 per month in child support plus $5,000 in attorney fees. By this time, Ida was working as a food server earning about one-tenth of Alfonso's salary and had started nursing school. After a two-day trial, the district court awarded primary physical custody to Alfonso on a three-week-on, two-week-off schedule, with two extra weeks for Alfonso during the year. The court kept Nevada as the child's official home ("habitual residence") and set a status check before the child starts school. It also ordered Ida to pay Alfonso $400 per month in child support and awarded Alfonso attorney fees, saying only that he was the "prevailing party." Alfonso later asked for $48,217 in fees and $2,138.77 in costs; the court ultimately ordered Ida to pay a combined $40,000 in fees and costs, without saying how much was fees and how much was costs. Ida appealed. The Court of Appeals reached three main conclusions. First, on custody, the court upheld the district court's decision to give Alfonso primary physical custody. The court rejected Ida's arguments: that this was really a modification of an existing custody arrangement (it was not, because there had been no prior custody determination); that a case called *Bluestein* required treating the arrangement as joint custody (the court explained percentage of time is just one consideration and the child's best interest controls); that the court had to consider joint custody even though neither parent asked for it (Ida had not requested it and could not now complain of an error she helped cause); and that the court misapplied the best-interest factors (the court found the district court's detailed findings were supported by the evidence). Second, on the claim that the court improperly "relocated" the child to California, the court found Ida had not raised this argument below, had not cited supporting authority, and had not shown that a relocation analysis would have changed the outcome. Third, on child support and attorney fees, the court sided with Ida. On child support, the court held the district court should have considered whether to reduce Ida's payment given the large income gap between the parties, and it reversed and sent that issue back. On attorney fees, the court held the award could not stand because the district court gave no legal basis for it and failed to make required findings — including about the income disparity — and because Alfonso's own filings were deficient. The court reversed and remanded the fee-and-cost order.

Leslie and Brett Miller divorced in 2015. They have two minor children. Through mediation they agreed on most issues, including custody: they share joint physical custody of one child, but Leslie has primary physical custody of the other child, who lives with her and stays with Brett every other weekend. They could not agree on child support. The trial judge ordered Brett to pay Leslie $345 per month. When Leslie asked the judge to explain how he reached that number, the judge said he had "run the numbers" using statutory percentages (18% for one child and 25% for two children) along with deviation factors permitted by Nevada law, but did not show the calculations. Leslie appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court took the case to answer a question it had never directly answered before: how do you calculate child support when parents share joint physical custody of one child but one parent has primary physical custody of another child? Several different formulas had been proposed by the parties and by the State Bar of Nevada's Family Law Section, producing wildly different numbers from $345 to $832.19 per month. The Court walked through Nevada's child support statutes. NRS 125B.070 sets baseline percentages of a parent's gross monthly income that the parent owes for child support, based on the number of children (18% for one child, 25% for two, etc.). The Court emphasized that this percentage depends on how many children the parents have, not on the custody arrangement. After that obligation is calculated, the custody arrangement determines who pays what to whom. The Court announced this step-by-step formula for the Millers' "split custody" situation: 1. Calculate each parent's support obligation under NRS 125B.070 based on the total number of children (here, 25% of each parent's gross monthly income because there are two children). For Leslie, that was $996.67; for Brett, $1,076.24. 2. Divide each parent's obligation by the number of children to get a per-child amount. Leslie: $498.34 per child; Brett: $538.12 per child. 3. For the child in joint physical custody, offset the per-child amounts (under the Court's prior decision in Wright v. Osburn): the higher earner pays the lower earner the difference. Brett owed Leslie $39.78 for the joint-custody child. 4. For the child in Leslie's primary physical custody, Brett owes the full per-child amount ($538.12) with no offset. 5. Add those two figures together: Brett owes $577.90 per month. 6. Make sure the result does not exceed the presumptive maximum amount per child in NRS 125B.070(2). 7. The district court may then deviate from that amount under NRS 125B.080, but if it does, it must make written findings of fact explaining the deviation and stating what the support amount would have been under the formula. Because the trial court used the wrong starting percentage (18% for one child rather than 25% for two), failed to state the pre-deviation amount, and failed to explain the deviation factors that produced $345, the Supreme Court reversed and sent the case back with instructions to follow the formula above. The Court also flagged an "anomaly": under its formula, Brett owes $577.90 for two children, but if there were only one child in Leslie's primary physical custody, he would owe $774.80. The Court noted that this is a matter for the legislatively created Committee to Review Child Support Guidelines to consider, since the Legislature in 2017 (through A.B. 278) directed that new guidelines be developed.

Michelle and Elvis Rivero divorced, and their divorce decree said they would share "joint physical custody" of their young child — but the actual schedule gave the child to Ms. Rivero five days a week and Mr. Rivero two days a week. Neither parent was ordered to pay child support. About a year later, Ms. Rivero went back to court asking for primary custody and child support, claiming Mr. Rivero rarely spent time with the child himself and lacked suitable living arrangements. The trial judge, Judge Miley, kept the joint-custody label in place, denied child support, sent the parents to mediation to work out a schedule, and eventually changed the schedule to an even 50/50 split, saying she was "just trying to find a middle ground." Along the way, Ms. Rivero asked Judge Miley to step off the case (a request called recusal), and when the judge refused, formally moved to disqualify her, claiming the judge was biased based on the parties' physical appearance. The chief judge rejected that motion as meritless, and Judge Miley then ordered Ms. Rivero to pay Mr. Rivero's attorney fees for having to fight a frivolous motion. On appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court used the case to answer a question Nevada law had never resolved: what exactly is "joint physical custody"? The court adopted Missouri's definition — an arrangement giving each parent "significant, but not necessarily equal" time with the child, structured so the child has "frequent, continuing and meaningful contact with both parents." In other words, joint custody does not require an exact 50/50 split, but each parent's time must be significant and meaningful. Applying that framework, the supreme court held the trial court went wrong in two ways. First, it labeled the arrangement joint physical custody without making specific factual findings to back that up. Second, it changed the custody schedule to an equal split without making specific findings that the change was in the child's best interest — the touchstone for all custody decisions. Both rulings were sent back for a do-over under the new definition. On child support, the court held that a parent may be entitled to support under Nevada's child-support statutes regardless of what the divorce decree says, and that a court departing from the statutory amounts must explain why in specific factual findings. Because the trial court did neither, that ruling was also reversed. The supreme court also announced a new math formula — a modified version of its earlier Wright v. Osburn approach — for calculating support when parents share joint custody but split time unequally, accounting for both differences in income and differences in time spent caring for the child. Finally, the court sided with the trial judges on the bias claims. A judge is presumed unbiased, and unhappiness with a judge's rulings is not a legally recognized ground for disqualification; the record contained no evidence of bias. The attorney-fee award stood as well: the court rejected Ms. Rivero's argument that a statute shielding parties from contempt punishment for seeking a change of judge also shields them from paying attorney fees for filing a frivolous disqualification motion.