Nevada family-law case summaries

Michael Schaefer and Robyn White were never married but share one child, M.S., who is about six years old. For most of the child's life, the two parents shared parenting without a court order, and the child lived mainly with White. According to the opinion, this was due in part to Schaefer working in North Dakota for about nine months in 2018 and to his struggles with substance abuse in 2019 and 2020. By 2022, Schaefer mostly saw the child on weekends. After tensions grew between Schaefer and White's new boyfriend, Schaefer filed a custody complaint in March 2023 and eventually asked for sole legal and sole physical custody. White answered and asked for the same for herself. In June 2023, the district court issued a temporary order giving each parent joint legal and joint physical custody on a week-on/week-off basis, and — because the child was about to start kindergarten — temporarily ordered that the child attend the public school in Schaefer's neighborhood, Roger M. Bryan Elementary School. The court told the parties this temporary school choice was essentially a "coin flip" that would be revisited at trial. After an evidentiary hearing in November 2023, the district court entered a final custody decree. It gave the parents joint legal and joint physical custody but structured the parenting time so that Schaefer generally had the child from Friday after school until Monday morning, while White had the child during the school week (with White also having the second weekend of each school month). The court ordered that the child attend the school in White's neighborhood, Aggie Roberts Elementary School. On child support, the court ordered Schaefer to pay White $1,118 per month and did not require White to pay anything, declining to assign ("impute") income to White because she was seven or eight months pregnant, her prior bartending job was not suitable that late in pregnancy, and the court found she was not unemployed without good cause. Schaefer appealed and raised three main complaints. First, he argued the schedule was not really "joint" physical custody because he had the child for less than 40 percent of the year. The appeals court explained that the 40-percent figure is a guideline, not a strict rule, and that the real question is what is in the child's best interest — a question the district court had analyzed in detail and that Schaefer did not directly challenge. Second, he argued the district court chose the school based only on drive time and logistics rather than the full list of factors Nevada courts use. The appeals court found that the district court had actually made specific findings on each factor, found most of them neutral or inapplicable given that the child was only five and in kindergarten, and that the only meaningful difference the parties presented was the commute. Third, he argued the court wrongly refused to treat White as voluntarily unemployed. The appeals court held that White's late-stage pregnancy provided good cause for not working as a bartender, and that nothing in the order prevents Schaefer from later asking to change child support if circumstances change. The appeals court affirmed the district court's decision on all three points.

This case is about who gets to care for a baby, J.B., whose parents were both incarcerated when he was born. (His parents had been arrested for the homicide of his older sibling.) Because neither parent could care for J.B., Nevada's child-welfare agency had to find someone else to take him in. Shortly after J.B.'s birth, DFS placed him with Becky and Jay Whipple, family friends of J.B.'s grandmother. The Whipples were not licensed foster parents at the time, and the district court signed an order describing them as "Unlicensed Fictive Kin." "Fictive kin," under Nevada law, means a person not related to a child by blood but who has a significant emotional and positive bond with the child. No one objected to that designation when it was made. Months later, after a paternity test confirmed Miles Stano Jr. was J.B.'s father, the father asked that J.B. be sent to live with the paternal grandfather in Illinois. After interstate paperwork was completed (about nine months after J.B. was placed with the Whipples, by which point the Whipples had become licensed foster parents), the district court held a placement hearing. The district court did not take evidence about what was best for J.B. Instead, the judge ruled that, as a matter of law, a blood relative always wins out over an unrelated person in placement decisions, and the judge also reversed course and decided the Whipples were not really fictive kin after all. The court ordered J.B. moved to Illinois. Compounding the issue, J.B.'s court-appointed attorney did not appear at the placement hearing or at the later reconsideration hearing. The Supreme Court noted J.B. was largely without representation throughout the case, even though state law requires that children in these proceedings be represented by counsel. The Nevada Supreme Court granted the writ and made several rulings. First, it explained that "fictive kin" status is judged from the perspective of both the prospective caregiver and the child. For an infant who cannot yet form relationships, the bond and commitment shown by the adult is what counts; an infant is not excluded from being placed with fictive kin just because the baby has not had time to bond. Second, the Supreme Court held that Nevada law does not put blood relatives ahead of fictive kin. The statute groups them together and prefers either over a foster home, but it does not rank them against each other. The decisive question is the child's best interest, and that requires actual factual findings. Third, the district court should not have proceeded with the placement hearing when J.B.'s attorney was absent and a continuance was being sought. Fourth, the Supreme Court ordered the case reassigned to a different district court judge, citing statements by the original judge that suggested he could not put aside his view that placement with "safe family" is always best. The Supreme Court vacated the placement order, lifted its prior stay, and sent the matter back for new proceedings before a different judge, who must hear evidence and make findings about what is actually in J.B.'s best interest.

Herman and Nadine Williams married in 2004 and have four children - three boys (currently 9, 12, and almost 14) and a daughter, A.W., who is the oldest and turns 18 in October 2022. During the marriage, Nadine took out student loans and earned a master's degree in nursing and now works as a nurse. Herman works as a tow truck driver for a company called Copart, earning a fee for each completed tow. Tensions began in 2018. Nadine hit A.W. with a piece of PVC pipe, leaving a scar on the child's head, which led to a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation that closed on the understanding that the children would be in Herman's care. Nadine also committed an act of domestic violence against her own mother, Phyllis Gayle. In March 2019, Herman took the children and left the marital home; Gayle then moved in with Herman, paying him $700 per month in rent. Nadine soon filed for divorce. Before trial, the district court gave Herman temporary physical custody, with Nadine getting weekend time that gradually increased. Over time, A.W. came to prefer living with Nadine, even running away from Herman to be with her, and she stayed with Nadine by her own choice; Herman last spent parenting time with A.W. in January 2020. Interviews conducted by the Family Mediation Center (FMC) showed the children's ratings of Nadine improved over time, reportedly after Nadine stopped using physical punishment when the court told her to do so. The case went to trial in February 2021. The district court decided several issues. On custody, it applied a legal presumption against Nadine because of her acts of domestic violence (a "rebuttable presumption" is a starting assumption that can be overcome by evidence), but concluded she overcame that presumption because she stopped using corporal punishment and the children reported improved relationships with her. The court ordered joint physical custody of all four children. On alimony (financial support paid by one spouse to the other), the court found neither party credible about their income and calculated their incomes from bank records and pay information. It found Herman's income was actually higher on a monthly basis and refused to award him alimony, describing the income gap as "negligible." On debts, the court treated Herman's roughly $75,000 in medical bills and Nadine's roughly $76,000 in student loans as community debt and offset them against each other, assigning each spouse their own debt. It did not divide Nadine's master's degree. Herman appealed. He narrowed his custody challenge to just the three boys, conceding he was not seeking custody of A.W. The appellate court reached four conclusions. First, it upheld the joint physical custody order for the boys, finding no abuse of discretion. Second, it declined to decide whether Nadine's master's degree should have been divided, because Herman never raised that issue at trial - only later in a post-judgment motion - so the point was not preserved for appeal. Third, it found the district court appears to have made an error in calculating Herman's income by counting some money twice: Herman moved money between his checking and savings accounts, and those internal transfers were mistakenly counted as additional income. Because that error may have affected the alimony decision, the court vacated (canceled) the alimony determination and sent it back for a recalculation. Fourth, it declined Herman's invitation to reexamine the district court's credibility findings, explaining that appellate courts generally defer to the trial court, which actually sees and hears the witnesses.