Nevada family-law case summaries

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.