Nevada family-law case summaries

Kenneth and Kimberly Einiger divorced in October 2014 through a stipulated divorce decree — a divorce settlement the parties agreed to and the court approved. Under that decree, Kenneth took on significant financial obligations to Kimberly, including alimony of $5,000 per month for life (with a 2.5 percent annual increase), her housing costs, various health-related expenses, a monthly credit card allowance, and continued payments on a two-million-dollar life insurance policy naming Kimberly as the sole beneficiary. Kenneth did not fully comply, including with his alimony obligations. Kimberly asked the court to convert the unpaid amounts into a formal money judgment. While that request was pending, Kimberly learned that Kenneth had listed for sale a condominium he had bought after the divorce, and that a sale was pending. She recorded a lis pendens against that condominium. A lis pendens is a public notice that a piece of real estate is tied up in a lawsuit; it warns potential buyers and lenders about the dispute. Because the notice clouded the condo's title, the pending sale collapsed. Kenneth filed an emergency motion to remove (expunge) the lis pendens. The district court denied the motion but said it would consider lifting the notice if Kenneth could show a real, viable pending sale. Kenneth then asked the Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus — a court order directing a lower court to perform an act the law requires — to force the district court to remove the notice. The Court of Appeals first decided it was appropriate to hear the petition. It explained that an order refusing to expunge a lis pendens cannot ordinarily be appealed directly, and that waiting to appeal at the end of the case would not be an adequate remedy because a lis pendens hurts the property's marketability and can cause substantial hardship to the owner. The court also noted that the district court's willingness to reconsider if Kenneth found a buyer did not fix the immediate harm the notice was causing to the property's title. Turning to the merits, the court held that a lis pendens is only proper when a lawsuit affects the title to or possession of real property. It is not a tool to help collect a money judgment. Here, Kimberly's underlying request was purely about money — reducing unpaid alimony and other financial obligations to a judgment — so it did not justify a lis pendens on Kenneth's separately owned condominium. Kimberly also argued that Kenneth's attempts to sell assets amounted to a fraudulent transfer designed to dodge his obligations. The court acknowledged that a fraudulent-transfer claim can be the kind of action that affects title or possession of real property. But Kimberly had not brought such a claim in her original motion, and her later fraud allegations were too vague — she did not state the circumstances of fraud with the particularity the rules require, and did not identify a specific type of fraud. Because her claims were limited to monetary obligations and she had not adequately alleged fraud, the court concluded the district court had committed a manifest abuse of discretion in refusing to expunge the notice.

This case arose from a divorce between Joseph Raul Garcia Rodriguez and Zoila Leon-Yanez. Their disputes centered on how to divide their shared property, how much Garcia Rodriguez should pay in child support and alimony (spousal support), and whether he should pay Leon-Yanez's attorney fees. Early in the case, Garcia Rodriguez was representing himself. He did not file a required document (a pre-trial memorandum) and did not show up to a court date called "calendar call." Because of that, the court treated him as being in "default" - meaning it proceeded without his participation - and held a hearing where only Leon-Yanez testified. Based on her testimony, the court entered a divorce decree that gave Leon-Yanez a piece of real estate (a corner building with two units, one on Pine Street and one on Ashton Street, called the "P&A Street property"), ordered Garcia Rodriguez to pay $1,500 per month in alimony for 10 years, set his child support at $1,128 per month, and required him to pay $5,500 of Leon-Yanez's attorney fees. Garcia Rodriguez then hired a lawyer and asked the court to undo the decree. He argued he did not understand the court's procedural requirements, that the support amounts did not match his actual income, that the property was divided unequally, and that the attorney fee award was not properly justified. He also raised a concern that a second property - one on Division Street - had accidentally been swept into the award to Leon-Yanez. The district court refused to set the decree aside but treated part of his request as a motion to change (modify) his support obligations. It refused to lower child support, saying a financial disclosure form (FDF) he filed in June 2022 was missing a page. But it did lower alimony to $700 per month. Notably, Garcia Rodriguez had filed a corrected, complete FDF in July 2022, and the district court never discussed that updated form when deciding these issues. On appeal, the Court of Appeals sorted out the property question first. It concluded that, reading the decree together with the record, Leon-Yanez received only the P&A Street property (not two separate properties), and that the court's later order effectively awarded the Division Street property to Garcia Rodriguez. That produced a one-for-one split of the two real properties - exactly the equal division Garcia Rodriguez said was required. Because he did not explain how he was harmed by the rest of the property allocation, the court affirmed the property decisions. On child support, the appeals court found the district court made a mistake by refusing to consider the more recent July 2022 FDF, which showed his income had dropped. On alimony, the court found the same mistake: the district court relied on older figures and an assumption that Garcia Rodriguez still received rental income, without considering the July 2022 form showing he no longer did. On attorney fees, the court held that the district court failed to analyze the required factors (known as the Brunzell factors) before ordering him to pay $5,500. The result: the appeals court affirmed the property division but reversed the child support, alimony, and attorney fee rulings and sent the case back to the district court to reconsider those issues in light of the July 2022 amended FDF and the required legal factors.

Sam and David Orgad married in Israel in 1983, moved to the United States in 1990, and in 2003 started a heating and air conditioning business called Temperature Control Services (TCS). During the marriage, David mostly ran the business while Sam raised the children and occasionally helped with management. Their relationship broke down, and Sam filed for divorce in Las Vegas in August 2019. The couple was granted a divorce in August 2021, but the court held off on deciding how to split their property, whether alimony (financial support paid from one spouse to the other) should be paid, and attorney fees until a trial. At trial, the two sides disagreed about how much the business was worth. David's expert valued TCS at $260,000 but did not testify at trial. Sam's expert testified that it was worth $663,000. The court found Sam's expert's report more accurate—partly because it accounted for potential unreported income that David's expert did not—and valued the business at $629,967. The court also addressed "marital waste," which refers to one spouse spending or destroying shared money for selfish reasons while a divorce is underway. David admitted he had wasted money, including trading in vehicles for new ones despite a court order (a joint preliminary injunction) barring such activity. He suggested $150,000 as the waste figure. After reviewing bank statements, tax returns, and the business's income statement, the court found David had wasted $167,354.56 over 27 months. Using the business value, other assets, and the waste figure, the court calculated that David owed Sam an "equalization payment" of $407,660.78 for her share of the community property, to be paid in $1,500 monthly installments. The court gave Sam the option (not a requirement) to secure that payment with a life insurance policy on David's life, at her own expense. The court also awarded Sam $8,000 per month in alimony for 11 years. The Court of Appeals reached two main conclusions. First, it decided the district court did not properly explain its alimony award and reversed that part, sending it back for the lower court to redo. The appeals court noted that David's take-home income was about $7,500 per month, yet the court ordered him to pay $8,000 per month in alimony while also finding he needed $5,000 per month to live on—figures that did not add up. The appeals court also found the lower court had relied on expense figures from Sam's Financial Disclosure Form that reflected her costs in Poland (where she had been living), even though she testified she intended to live in Las Vegas with different expenses, and then estimated her expenses at $8,000 per month without explaining how. The court also faulted the lack of findings explaining why 11 years was the right duration for a 38-year marriage in which Sam was primarily a homemaker. Second, the appeals court upheld the marital waste finding. Because David admitted he had committed waste, the burden shifted to him to justify his spending, and the court found the $167,354.56 figure was supported. Sam's argument that additional waste went unaccounted for was rejected as not sufficiently developed. The appeals court also rejected several other arguments as not cogently argued or not supported, including Sam's complaint about the life insurance option (the court noted she was given a choice, not an order) and David's arguments about the business valuation and about being required to operate TCS (the court noted the order did not actually require him to keep operating it).

David and Christie Stucke entered a domestic partnership in May 2015, married in May 2016, and have two children together. After about two and a half years of marriage, David filed for divorce. The case was, in the district court's words, "hotly contested and litigated," with a five-day trial that included testimony from both spouses and a jointly retained custody expert, psychologist Dr. John Paglini. Both sides asked the appeals court to review parts of the final divorce decree. The disputes fell into two groups: how property was split, and how the children's custody and support were handled. On property, David argued that a house on West Maule Avenue should not have been divided equally. He said he had used his own money — poker winnings earned before the domestic partnership — for the down payment and for repairs, and that the house was meant to stay his. Because the parties acquired the house after entering their domestic partnership, the law presumed it was community property (property both partners own together). David wanted the court to use a formula from an older Nevada case, called Malmquist, to give him credit for his separate contributions. The appeals court explained that this formula only applies when separate property increased in value through community effort, or community property increased in value because of separate contributions. David never argued that his contributions increased the home's value, and he did not provide the supporting evidence needed to run that calculation. So the court upheld the equal division. Christie, in turn, challenged the district court's decision to give David all the sale proceeds from two other houses — one on Birkland Court and one on Grandview Place — as his separate property. For the Birkland property, David had bought it with separate funds and set up a rental business through an LLC; Christie had signed paperwork acknowledging the house was David's separate property. The law says that once property is separate, turning it into community property ("transmutation") must be proven by clear and convincing evidence — a high standard. Christie did not point to anything in the record meeting that standard, so the appeals court upheld that award. For the Grandview property, Christie had signed a quitclaim deed giving up any interest, David had used pre-marriage retirement funds, and there was no evidence community funds paid the mortgage. Nevada law treats a spouse-to-spouse transfer of real estate as a presumed gift that also requires clear and convincing evidence to undo. The appeals court upheld that award too. David also asked that Christie repay the community for "marital waste" — money he claimed she wasted, mostly through gambling and by allegedly devaluing her businesses. The district court found Christie's credibility about her finances "questionable" but also found it "impossible" to figure out how much money, if any, was actually wasted, partly because David's financial summaries were incomplete and he had no accounting background. Because the court could not determine an actual amount of waste, it declined to order reimbursement (though it did make Christie responsible for the businesses' expenses and taxes). The appeals court found this supported by the evidence and upheld it. On custody, David argued that he should not have to share joint physical custody, pointing out that several of the district court's findings were unfavorable to Christie. The expert, Dr. Paglini, had spent extensive time with the family, produced an 88-page report, found both parents fit, and recommended joint physical custody with roughly a 60/40 split in David's favor. Dr. Paglini noted Christie's unsubstantiated allegations that David had raped her and molested their daughter, and said that if the court found she fabricated those claims for advantage in the divorce, David should get primary custody — but Dr. Paglini himself did not reach a conclusion that she had fabricated them. The district court found the allegations unsubstantiated but also could not conclude Christie had fabricated them. It went through each statutory "best interest" factor and adopted Dr. Paglini's recommendation. The appeals court noted that "a different court may have reached a different conclusion," but concluded this was not an abuse of discretion, and it upheld the joint-custody award. It also upheld the label "joint physical custody" for the roughly 60/40 schedule, because Christie had the children at least 40 percent of the time and more than 146 days per year. Finally, David argued the district court should have imputed more income to Christie and ordered her to pay child support. The court found Christie had not accurately reported her income and that her actual income was "almost impossible to discern." It concluded she could earn at least as much as David, set both incomes at David's monthly figure of $8,333, and ordered equal child support, netting to zero. The appeals court pointed out that the district court had actually imputed income to Christie — the opposite of what David claimed — and that David never provided figures showing what the correct amount should have been. Finding the decision supported by the evidence, the court affirmed the entire judgment.

Thomas and Svetlana Potter married in 1994, had a child in 1995, and divorced shortly after the child was born. Svetlana was initially awarded primary physical custody, but in 1996 the parents agreed by stipulation to share joint physical and legal custody - meaning both parents shared responsibility for the child's day-to-day care. According to the record, the arrangement worked without custody problems from 1996 to 2003, with both parents actively involved. In 2003, Svetlana received a job offer from a California hospital for a registered nurse position at a higher salary than she was earning in Las Vegas, and she wanted to pursue a nurse anesthesiologist degree from a California school - a program not available in Las Vegas. She filed a petition under NRS 125C.200, Nevada's relocation statute, asking for permission to move to Corona, California with the child. Thomas opposed it, arguing that the Legislature amended the relocation statute in 1999 so that it no longer applied to joint physical custody arrangements, and that Svetlana would first have to win primary physical custody before she could seek relocation. The district court treated the case as an ordinary relocation petition under NRS 125C.200, analyzed the relocation factors from an earlier case called Schwartz v. Schwartz, granted Svetlana's petition, awarded her primary physical custody, and provided for significant contact and visitation between Thomas and the child. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed. It held that NRS 125C.200 does not apply when parents share joint physical custody. The statute's current text speaks only of "custodial" and "noncustodial" parents; an earlier version of the statute (formerly NRS 125A.350) had expressly covered "a parent having joint custody," but the Legislature removed that language. The court found the legislative history confirmed that the statute was intended to apply only to primary physical custody situations. Instead, the court explained the correct procedure: when a parent who shares joint physical custody wants to move out of Nevada with the child, that parent must file a motion for a change of custody under NRS 125.510(2), seeking primary physical custody for the purpose of relocating. The district court then decides, under the "best interest of the child" standard, whether the child is better off living outside Nevada with the relocating parent as primary physical custodian, or living in Nevada with the non-moving parent as primary physical custodian. The moving parent bears the burden of proving that living out of state with him or her serves the child's best interest. Because the district court applied the wrong statute, did not use the factors from Truax v. Truax, and made no finding that the move was in the child's best interest, the Supreme Court reversed and sent the case back for the district court to decide whether it is in the child's best interest to live in California with Svetlana or in Nevada with Thomas.