Nevada family-law case summaries

Richard Candelaria and Michael Kelly met in 1991 and began a long-term relationship. They moved in together that November, exchanged rings in July 1992, and lived together for years. But they could not legally marry in Nevada because, at the time, Nevada law and later the Nevada Constitution prohibited same-sex marriage. When California legalized same-sex marriage in 2008, the couple traveled there and formally married. In 2020, Michael filed for divorce. The fight in this case is about how to divide two assets: Michael's 401(k) retirement account (opened in 1984 with no contributions after 2008) and shares of stock he received through his job between 1996 and 2004. Under Nevada community property rules, assets acquired during marriage are generally split, but assets acquired before marriage stay with the spouse who owns them. So the question is: when did the marriage start? Michael said the marriage began in 2008, when they actually wed in California. Richard said the marriage should be treated as starting in November 1991 or July 1992, because they would have married then if Nevada had not unconstitutionally banned same-sex marriage. The district court sided with Michael and used 2008 as the marriage date, treating the 401(k) and stock as Michael's separate property. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed. The court explained two related but distinct points. First, the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which established that same-sex couples have the right to marry and that states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, applies retroactively. So Nevada must recognize the couple's 2008 California marriage even though Nevada did not recognize such marriages in 2008. That part favored Richard, in the sense that the marriage is treated as valid from 2008 forward. Second, however, Obergefell does not require courts to pretend a marriage existed before a couple actually got married. Nevada does not recognize "common-law marriage" -- the idea that a couple who lives together long enough and acts married is legally married without a ceremony. A 1943 Nevada statute bans common-law marriage, and that ban applies to everyone regardless of sexual orientation. Richard asked the court to apply a multi-factor "but-for" test (borrowed from an Oregon case) to decide whether the couple would have married earlier had they been allowed to. The court concluded that doing so would amount to recognizing a common-law marriage, which Nevada law forbids. The court said it had no power to carve out a judicial exception to the statutory ban, especially since Richard did not argue that the ban itself was unconstitutional. The practical result: the marriage is dated from the 2008 California ceremony, and assets Michael acquired before then remain his separate property.

While married, Luong and Vahey set up college savings accounts (called "529 accounts" after the federal tax provision that governs them) for each of their three children. When the couple divorced, they disagreed about how to split these accounts. After a 2020 hearing where both sides presented evidence, the trial judge concluded that Vahey had put in about 25 percent of the money and Luong (with help from her family) had put in about 75 percent, and divided the accounts accordingly - 25 percent to Vahey, 75 percent to Luong, with each parent managing their share on behalf of the children. About a year after that hearing, Luong hired a financial consultant who calculated slightly different numbers: that Luong and her family contributed 77.11 percent and Vahey 22.89 percent. Based on this new report, Luong asked the court to fix or undo the account-division part of the divorce decree. She used two rules: NRCP 60(a), which lets a court fix simple clerical mistakes, and NRCP 60(b)(1), which lets a court undo a decision because of "mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect." The trial court refused, finding there was no clerical error, that the request was filed too late, and that it was frivolous because it sought only a tiny adjustment to accounts the parents did not even own themselves but managed for their children. In the same set of filings, Vahey asked the court to order Luong to hand over the children's passports, saying he feared she might leave the country with the children. Luong objected. The trial court decided to split the passports - ordering Luong to surrender two of the three children's passports to Vahey's attorney and letting her keep one - to prevent either parent from taking the children abroad on their own. Luong appealed. The Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court that there was no clerical error to correct under NRCP 60(a), because the judge's percentage finding was a product of weighing the evidence - an exercise of judgment - not a slip of the pen. The appellate court also noted that Luong never provided a transcript of the 2020 hearing, so it presumed that the missing record supported the trial court's decision. The Court of Appeals then explained that although Luong labeled her request as an NRCP 60(b)(1) motion, its real substance was a request based on "newly discovered evidence," which is governed by a different rule, NRCP 60(b)(2). Courts look at what a motion actually asks for, not what it is called. On timing, the appellate court found the trial court had used the wrong starting date: the six-month deadline runs from when written notice of the decree's entry is served, not from when the decree is entered, and by that measure Luong's motion was filed in time. Even so, the appellate court upheld the denial on the merits, because Luong never explained why she waited about a year to obtain the financial analysis, and evidence that could have been found earlier with reasonable diligence does not qualify as "newly discovered evidence." Finally, on the passports, the appellate court reversed. It explained that a judge has two possible legal routes to decide a passport dispute like this: the Uniform Child Abduction Prevention Act (found in NRS Chapter 125D), which allows passport restrictions only when there is a credible risk of abduction, or a best-interest-of-the-child analysis. Here the trial court found no evidence that either parent was a flight risk (which ruled out the abduction route), but it split the passports based on an "adverse inference" against both parents without ever analyzing what was in the children's best interest. Because the court could not be sure the decision was made for the correct legal reasons, it sent the passport issue back for further proceedings.

This case grows out of a contentious custody dispute between Minh Luong and her ex-husband James Vahey (called "Jim" in the opinion), who divorced in 2021. They were originally given joint legal and joint physical custody of their three children, sharing a week-on/week-off schedule. Since 2019, the parents have repeatedly fought over school placement, therapy, and other child-related matters. After a hearing in November 2021, the district court found that Minh had turned the children against Jim - a situation the court described as parental alienation. In March 2022, the court ordered Jim and the children into an intensive reunification therapy program called Turning Points for Families, based in New York. The court also temporarily gave Jim sole legal and sole physical custody for the New York therapy and for a 90-day period afterward, while planning to revisit the arrangement once therapists recommended it. Minh asked the court to reconsider and to pause these orders. The court refused. She then took her fight to the Court of Appeals by asking for a writ - an extraordinary court order directing a lower court to act (mandamus) or to stop acting beyond its authority (prohibition). Her first such petition was denied because the New York program had not gone forward as planned and a status check was coming up. She filed the current petition after that. The Court of Appeals made several decisions. On the New York therapy orders, it said the issue was moot - meaning there was no longer any effective relief the court could give, because the parties' limited participation in the program had already concluded. On Minh's request to undo the no-contact orders and restore joint custody, the court declined to step in, noting that the district court had now scheduled a full evidentiary hearing to set final custody, and that Minh could appeal after a final decision if she disagreed with it. The court did, however, express concern that custody had been temporarily changed for a long period, effectively cutting one parent off from the children without a full hearing. The one place where Minh prevailed was her request to move the case to a different judge. Reviewing comments the district judge made about the upcoming hearing - including that the judge did not need expert or therapist testimony and had described how the case was going to come out - the Court of Appeals concluded that the judge appeared to have made up her mind before hearing the evidence. To preserve the appearance of fairness, the court ordered that the case be reassigned to a different department. It denied the petition in all other respects.

Eric and Lynita Nelson were married. Ten years into the marriage, in 1993, they signed a "separate property agreement" (the SPA) — a written contract dividing what had been shared marital property (community property) into each spouse's own separate property. That separate property was placed into two separate trusts. In 2001, they converted those trusts into "self-settled spendthrift trusts" (SSSTs) — a special kind of trust that, under Nevada law, is designed to shield the assets inside it from most creditors, even the person who created and benefits from the trust. Eric had his trust (the Eric L. Nelson Nevada Trust) and Lynita had hers (the Lynita S. Nelson Nevada Trust). In 2009, Eric filed for divorce. Because the couple's wealth was locked inside these trusts, the trusts were later added to the divorce case as necessary parties, and Lynita brought various claims against Eric's trust. The family court judge issued a detailed divorce decree. Among other things, the judge concluded that even though the SPA and the trusts were validly created, the real intent behind them was to protect assets from creditors — not to permanently split up the property in the event of divorce. Based largely on testimony from Eric and Lynita, the judge treated much of the trust property as if it were still shared, ordered the two trusts' assets "equalized" (roughly $8.7 million shifted around so each side ended up with a comparable amount), ordered Eric's trust to pay Lynita's spousal support, child support arrears, and legal and expert fees, and imposed "constructive trusts" (a court-created ownership arrangement used as a remedy) over two properties. The Nevada Supreme Court agreed with the family court on some points and disagreed on many others. It ruled that the family court did have the power (subject-matter jurisdiction) to hear the trust issues inside the divorce — the case was fundamentally a divorce, not a probate matter, so it did not have to be heard by a probate judge. It also ruled that both the SPA and both trusts were valid and clearly written. But the court held the family court made several errors. Because the SPA and the trusts were clear and unambiguous, the judge was not allowed to rely on the spouses' testimony about what they "really" intended (this is called "parol evidence" — outside evidence used to explain or contradict a written document). The court also held that Nevada's spendthrift-trust statutes do not let a court shuffle assets between two such trusts to equalize them, and do not let a court order one spouse's trust to pay that spouse's personal debts — including child support and spousal support — when those debts were not known at the time the trust was created. The court explained that Nevada, unlike states such as Florida, South Dakota, and Wyoming, has deliberately chosen not to allow child- and spousal-support claims to reach spendthrift trust assets, and that changing that policy is a job for the Legislature, not the courts. The court affirmed the actual dissolution of the marriage and affirmed the $800,000 lump-sum alimony award as an amount, but held it must be collected from Eric personally, not from his trust. It vacated the "unjust enrichment" findings because that claim had been dismissed and was never properly revived, and vacated the constructive trusts over the Russell Road and Lindell properties. It also directed that the family court must actually "trace" the trust assets — track where the money and property came from — to determine whether any true community property still exists inside the trusts, because only community property (not each spouse's separate property) can be divided by the court. Finally, the court noted one important qualifier: to the extent community property is found inside a trust, the non-beneficiary spouse's share of that community property is not shielded by the spendthrift protections, so the court can divide that community-property portion.

Eric and Lynita Nelson married, and ten years into the marriage they signed a "separate property agreement" (SPA) that converted their shared marital property into separate property belonging to each spouse individually. They then placed each spouse's separate property into his or her own trust. In 2001, they converted those trusts into "self-settled spendthrift trusts" -- a type of trust that, under Nevada law, shields the assets from most creditors. Eric was the beneficiary of his trust; Lynita was the beneficiary of hers. In 2009, Eric filed for divorce. The family court eventually issued a divorce decree that, among other things, treated the two trusts as if their contents needed to be balanced out: it ordered roughly $8.7 million in trust assets to be equalized between the two trusts, ordered Eric's trust to pay Lynita $800,000 in lump-sum alimony, ordered Eric's trust to pay child-support arrears, and imposed "constructive trusts" (a court-created ownership interest) over two properties (the Russell Road and Lindell properties) held in the trusts. The court reasoned that Eric had effectively run both trusts, breached fiduciary duties, and unjustly enriched himself. The Nevada Supreme Court took the case and ruled mostly in favor of Eric's trust, while leaving the divorce itself and certain personal obligations of Eric in place. The court held: - The family court did have authority (subject-matter jurisdiction) to decide trust-related claims that came up in a divorce. Eric's trust had argued that only a probate court could hear them. - The SPA was a valid, clear written agreement that converted the couple's community property into separate property, and the court could not use outside testimony to contradict its plain terms. - Both spendthrift trusts were validly created under Nevada law. Even if Eric had broken trust formalities, the remedy was a lawsuit against the trustee -- not invalidating the trust. - The family court should have "traced" the assets in the trusts to figure out whether any community property had crept back in. Without that tracing, it could not rely on the parties' conflicting testimony about what was separate or community. - Nevada law strongly protects spendthrift-trust assets from court orders. The family court was wrong to "equalize" trust assets between the two trusts and wrong to make Eric's trust pay Eric's personal obligations like child support and alimony. Nevada -- unlike Florida, South Dakota, and Wyoming -- has no exception allowing spendthrift trusts to be tapped for child or spousal support that arose after the trust was created. - The lump-sum alimony award of $800,000 was within the trial court's discretion as to amount and form, but it should have been ordered against Eric personally, not against his trust. - The "unjust enrichment" claim had been dismissed earlier and never re-pled, so the family court could not base relief on it. Likewise, the constructive trusts on the Russell Road and Lindell properties had to be vacated because imposing a constructive trust on assets inside a valid spendthrift trust violates Nevada's statutory protections. - The June 8, 2015, follow-up order was vacated to the extent it tried to enforce parts of the decree being reversed, but kept in place for matters like health-care costs for the son, insurance costs, removal of a security gate, and attorney fees for contempt. The dissolution of the marriage itself stays in place. The case goes back to the family court to redo the property division and related rulings consistent with the opinion.