Nevada family-law case summaries

Michelle and Kerry Faughnan married in 2008. In 2021, Michelle filed for divorce, asking the court to divide the couple's shared property and to award her alimony (ongoing support payments from one spouse to another after divorce). Kerry responded and filed his own claims. The court set deadlines: discovery (the pretrial process of gathering evidence and information from the other side) would close on March 23, 2022, and trial would begin later in April 2022. On March 25, 2022 - after the discovery deadline had passed - Michelle asked the court to extend discovery and push back the trial. She said Kerry hadn't fully disclosed information about assets, his income, and his criminal charges, and that she and her attorney both had health problems that had slowed them down. The court denied her request. It found the request was filed too late under a local court rule, that she hadn't shown "excusable neglect" for the delay, that she hadn't included the required list of completed and remaining discovery, and that she hadn't shown good cause to delay the trial. Before trial, the parties settled their disagreements. The court entered a divorce decree that included their agreements on dividing property and on alimony. Under the agreement, Kerry would make Michelle's $1,319 monthly car payment until the car was paid off and also pay her $1,350 per month during that period; once the car was paid off, he would pay her $2,700 per month until April 2027, when the alimony obligation would end. The alimony would also end if Michelle remarried or if either party died. The parties agreed the alimony was otherwise non-modifiable - meaning it could not be changed later. Michelle then asked the court to set aside the decree under a rule (NRCP 60(b)(1)) that lets courts undo a judgment because of "mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect." She argued the alimony wasn't enough to support her, that the earlier denial of her discovery-extension request was a mistake, and that she had been effectively forced into settling. She also filed a motion claiming an asset had been left out of the decree. The district court denied both motions. On appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that the district court had acted within its discretion in denying the discovery extension and continuance, noting that Michelle filed late, did not explain her delay, and that her own attorney admitted he had not reviewed the discovery materials in time - showing a lack of diligence. Because the underlying discovery ruling was not erroneous and did not deny Michelle a fair chance to present her case, it was not a "mistake" that justified undoing the decree. On alimony, the court noted the parties had agreed the award was non-modifiable, and that even if it could be changed, Michelle had not shown the changed circumstances required to modify it. Finally, the court held Michelle waived any challenge to the omitted-asset ruling because she offered no argument about it on appeal. The court also declined Kerry's request to sanction Michelle for filing a supposedly frivolous appeal.

Trisha and Joshua Rowberry divorced in 2012. Trisha received primary physical custody of their two children, and both parents shared joint legal custody. Joshua had weekly parenting time. In 2019 Trisha married Trevyn, a U.S. Air Force officer stationed near Phoenix, Arizona. Trisha asked the court for permission to move the children to Arizona; the district court granted that request in March 2020, and the Court of Appeals affirmed that decision in a 2021 ruling. Not long after, in July 2020, Trevyn received military orders to report to a base near San Antonio, Texas. Trisha and Trevyn moved to Texas. At the time Trisha moved, the children were physically staying with Joshua in Nevada for the summer. Trisha notified Joshua of the move by email, and Joshua initially disagreed. Trisha filed an emergency motion to have the children returned to her, but Joshua relented and let the children go to Texas, so that motion became unnecessary. The children then enrolled in school in Texas. A series of motions followed. At one point the district court told Trisha she needed to file a second relocation motion (to move from Arizona to Texas). Trisha challenged that requirement in the Nevada Supreme Court, but the Court of Appeals denied her challenge because of a recent Nevada Supreme Court decision, Pelkola v. Pelkola, which held that a parent needs permission even when moving from one state outside Nevada to another state outside Nevada. Trisha then filed her second relocation motion. Joshua filed a countermotion asking for primary physical custody in Nevada. At a May 2022 evidentiary hearing, the court heard testimony from Trisha, Joshua, and Trevyn, including testimony about alleged domestic violence in the Texas home involving Trisha, Trevyn, and the older child, T.R. Those incidents had been investigated by Texas child protective services (which reached an "unable to determine" finding), the Air Force (which found the allegation did not meet its criteria), and local law enforcement (which filed no charges). T.R. told a Las Vegas interviewer he preferred to live with Joshua; the younger child, A.R., said she preferred to live with her mother in Texas. After the hearing, the district court issued a 28-page order and a formal decision. It found that Trisha had "relocated from Arizona to Texas without permission," treated that as effectively violating a criminal statute (NRS 200.359), excluded the evidence she had gathered after moving to Texas, and granted Joshua primary physical custody, finding it in the children's best interest. The Court of Appeals reversed. It found several errors. First, the court held that the criminal statute Trisha was accused of violating did not apply to her, because when she moved, the children were with Joshua in Nevada, not in her physical custody, and both Joshua and the court knew about the move before the children were relocated. Because she did not violate that criminal statute, the court also held that the evidence-exclusion rule tied to that statute should not have been used against her, meaning her post-relocation evidence about the children's schooling and activities was wrongly excluded. Second, the court found that the district court analyzed the evidence improperly. It compared the children's grades in Texas to their grades in Nevada, but the relevant comparison in a second relocation case would be between Arizona (where they had been authorized to live) and Texas. The court also found the district judge had improperly revisited and rejected findings from the earlier 2020 relocation decision, which is barred by a rule called "law of the case." Third, the court found several of the district court's factual findings were not supported by the evidence, including findings that Trisha would not comply with visitation orders, that she refused to file a relocation motion, and that she violated the criminal statute. However, the court found that the district court's finding about Joshua's motives in opposing relocation was adequately supported. Fourth, the court found the district court wrongly handled A.R.'s stated preference. A.R. was nearly 13-and-a-half when interviewed and expressed a clear wish to stay in Texas with her mother, but the district court decided she lacked the maturity to form an intelligent preference, based partly on her answers to a question about three wishes (she said she wanted to stop having migraines and to have mind-reading superpowers). The Court of Appeals found the district court applied the wrong legal standard and improperly combined A.R.'s situation with T.R.'s, even though A.R. was not involved in the alleged domestic violence and had a closer relationship with her mother. Finally, the court declined Trisha's request to limit the Pelkola decision for military families. It explained that it is bound to follow the Nevada Supreme Court's interpretation of the statute, and that any change for military families would have to come from the Legislature, Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, or the Nevada Supreme Court. The case was sent back to the district court for a new determination on Trisha's motion to relocate with A.R. and Joshua's countermotion for primary custody.

This case is about when grandparents in Nevada can get a court order requiring their grandchildren's parents to let them visit. Nevada law (NRS 125C.050) lets grandparents and certain other people ask a court for visitation, but only if "a parent of the child has denied or unreasonably restricted visits with the child." The grandchildren's parents, Ashley and John Franklin, divorced and were given joint legal and joint physical custody of the two children. During the divorce proceedings, the children had briefly lived with the grandparents under a six-month temporary guardianship. After the children went back to their parents, Ashley and John signed a partial parenting agreement saying that no one else, including the maternal grandparents, would have court-ordered custody or visitation. The grandparents then asked the court for visitation anyway. At the evidentiary hearing, the father (John) testified that, after a roughly five-month period when he had cut off contact based on a mistaken belief about Phillip's role in his fiance's arrest, he allowed the grandparents to see the children regularly during his custodial time - including afternoon visits, school pickups, an overnight on Christmas Eve 2021, a spring-break trip, and several overnight stays. Phillip kept a log showing 196 hours with the children in 2021. The grandmother (Carolyn), by contrast, said Ashley would not arrange visits during her custodial time. The trial judge found Ashley not credible and relied on John's and the grandparents' testimony. The trial judge ruled that, even though Ashley denied contact during her time, the overall amount of contact the grandparents had with the children - through John's parenting time - was enough that the grandparents were not being "denied or unreasonably restricted" from visiting. The petition was denied. The grandparents appealed. They argued the trial court essentially "rubber stamped" Ashley's refusal by ignoring the fact that she gave them no time at all. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed. The key legal question was how to read the words "a parent" in NRS 125C.050(3). Does it mean the petition can go forward if just one parent denies visits? Or does the court look at the overall picture across both parents in a joint custody situation? The Supreme Court held that, where parents share joint custody and both participate in the case, courts should look at the petitioners' overall access to the children. If one parent is providing reasonable contact, the petition fails - the court does not need to scrutinize what the other parent is doing. The court reasoned this approach better balances two interests: the child's interest in having a relationship with grandparents (which is met if the grandparents are getting regular contact through one parent) and the parents' constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children, recognized in Troxel v. Granville. Reading the statute the other way, the court said, would let petitions proceed even when the child is already getting plenty of grandparent contact, which would intrude on parental rights without serving the child. Applying that rule, the Supreme Court held the trial court did not abuse its discretion. The grandparents' factual reports of their visits supported the finding that contact was not unreasonably restricted. The grandparents' worry that their access could disappear in the future - what the court called the "volatility" of family relationships - was not, by itself, an unreasonable restriction. The court also declined to consider arguments the grandparents had not properly preserved below (that Ashley was unfit and that the court should adopt a "functional-parent" theory) and treated as moot their challenge to the order ending their temporary guardianship, since the six-month guardianship had already expired by its own terms.