Nevada family-law case summaries

Daniel and Kevyn Friedman divorced in Nevada in November 2008. Their stipulated divorce decree — one both sides agreed to — gave them joint legal custody of their three young children and included a promise that Nevada courts would "always" be the place where any future custody fights would be decided, no matter where the family lived. The decree anticipated that Kevyn and the children would move to Idaho and eventually California, and that custody would shift to a joint physical arrangement once Daniel found work in California. That is roughly what happened: Daniel found work in California and moved there, and Kevyn and the children followed. But the parents could not agree on a joint custody schedule. In August 2010, Kevyn went back to the Nevada court and asked for primary physical custody. Daniel objected, arguing that because no one in the family lived in Nevada anymore, the Nevada court had lost its power (its "subject matter jurisdiction") to decide the dispute. He also registered the decree in California and started a competing custody proceeding there. The Nevada district court sided with Kevyn, holding that the parents' written agreement to a Nevada forum trumped the jurisdictional rules and that Daniel was barred ("estopped") from denying Nevada's jurisdiction because he had agreed to it. The Nevada Supreme Court disagreed and granted Daniel's petition. The court explained that the UCCJEA — a uniform law adopted by Nevada, California, and every state except Massachusetts — is "the exclusive jurisdictional basis for making a child custody determination by a court of this State." Under that law, a state's ongoing jurisdiction over its own custody orders ends once a court finds that the child, the parents, and anyone acting as a parent no longer live in the state. The district court itself found that the entire family had left Nevada for California, so Nevada's jurisdiction ceased. By the time Kevyn filed her 2010 motion, California had become the children's "home state" under the UCCJEA — a point Kevyn conceded. The court held that the parents' agreement to litigate in Nevada could not change this result, because parties cannot create subject matter jurisdiction by agreement. Such a forum-selection agreement is not meaningless: it is one factor a court that actually has jurisdiction (here, California) may weigh in deciding whether to hand the case off to another state as the more appropriate forum. But that decision belongs to California, not Nevada. In the Supreme Court's words, by declaring itself possessed of jurisdiction and suggesting that California could ask Nevada to defer, "the district court got things precisely backward." For the same reason, the court rejected the argument that Daniel was judicially or equitably estopped from contesting jurisdiction — a court that lacks subject matter jurisdiction under the UCCJEA "does not acquire it by estoppel." The Supreme Court directed the district court to stand down from its assertion of jurisdiction except as permitted by NRS 125A.355(2) — the provision requiring it to stay its proceeding and communicate with the California court — and to dismiss the case unless the California court declines jurisdiction in favor of Nevada. Two justices dissented, taking the view that extraordinary writ relief was not warranted at this time.