Nevada family-law case summaries

Sandra and Curtis Stewart married in 2010 and have three minor children. During the marriage, Curtis worked in mining and Sandra was a stay-at-home mother. In 2018, Curtis filed for divorce and asked for sole custody of the children, saying Sandra was unfit because of mental health issues, addiction, and erratic behavior. Sandra responded by asking for joint custody, child support, and alimony (financial support paid by one former spouse to the other). After years of contested custody litigation, the case went to trial in January 2021. The trial judge awarded Curtis sole legal and primary physical custody and gave Sandra supervised parenting time. The judge also decided Sandra had been deliberately earning less than she could ("willfully underemployed"), assigned her an assumed income for calculating child support, ordered her to pay a small amount in child support arrears (past-due support), awarded her a limited amount of alimony, and awarded Curtis a large sum in attorney fees. When dividing the couple's property, the judge gave Curtis the marital home and most of the vehicles, tools, and guns, while making Curtis responsible for the community debt, and gave Sandra a retirement account and one handgun. Sandra appealed, challenging almost everything. The Court of Appeals split its decision. On custody, the court sided with the trial judge. Sandra argued the judge did not make enough findings and that the judge was really punishing her rather than protecting the children. The Court of Appeals disagreed, explaining that the trial judge had gone through the statutory "best interest of the child" factors in detail, found that eight of twelve favored Curtis, and grounded the decision in concerns such as alleged domestic violence in Sandra's home and Sandra's arrest for driving under the influence with a crash during her parenting time. Because the decision was supported by the evidence and was not made to punish Sandra, the court affirmed it. The court also noted Sandra did not challenge the child support ruling on appeal, so that ruling was treated as waived and affirmed too. On the other three issues, the court found problems and sent them back to the trial court. First, on alimony, the trial judge did not explain how it applied the eleven factors the law requires, so the appeals court reversed the alimony award and ordered the trial court to do the required analysis. Second, on the division of property, the judge gave Curtis a much larger share without adequately explaining why an unequal split was justified, and never calculated what Sandra's share of the marital home would be. The court also said the judge improperly tried to balance things out by treating attorney fees and child support arrears as if they were part of the couple's shared property, which they were not. So the court reversed the property division and sent it back. Third, on attorney fees, the judge awarded Curtis fees without going through the required legal factors, including the difference in the parties' incomes, so the court reversed that too.