Nevada family-law case summaries

Christina Sobczyk and Aaron Osborne share one child, C.O., born in January 2015. In 2017, a New York court entered a stipulated (agreed-upon) custody order that gave Christina "sole custody" and allowed her to move with the child to Nevada, while Aaron received parenting time on a gradually increasing schedule. That order also required both parents to have independent access to the child's healthcare and education records, and required Christina to give Aaron written updates about the child's providers. Christina moved to Nevada in September 2017. In 2018, Aaron had some contact with the child, including two authorized visits in New York. During the August visit, Child Protective Services came to Aaron's home based on allegations from Christina; CPS found the allegations unfounded and left the child in Aaron's care. The district court later reviewed video and found the child did not appear "stressed, traumatized, or frightened" during that visit. Agencies in both New York and Nevada investigated allegations against Aaron and closed their cases as unsubstantiated. In September 2018, Christina brought the New York order into the Nevada court system and asked the court to stop all contact between Aaron and the child. Aaron responded by asking the court to confirm joint legal custody and to grant joint physical custody. The case went to trial, and the court heard 13 days of testimony between June 2019 and February 2020. The trial was delayed by an attorney's withdrawal and the COVID-19 pandemic. The presiding judge then retired, and a senior judge granted Aaron's request for a new trial, explaining she was uncomfortable deciding the case by only watching videos of the earlier proceedings. Before the new trial, Aaron asked the court to exclude evidence of his criminal history and certain out-of-court statements the child had made to a therapist. The court excluded that evidence. After the new trial, the court found that Christina had severely interfered with Aaron's relationship with the child. It ordered joint legal custody, gave Christina primary physical custody, and provided that Aaron's parenting time would increase gradually and be determined by a "reunification specialist." On appeal, the Court of Appeals upheld most of the district court's decisions. It concluded the senior judge acted within her discretion in granting a new trial under NRCP 63, which allows a successor judge to order a new trial if she did not preside over the original trial. It upheld the evidence rulings, in part because Christina did not provide transcripts of the relevant hearing, so the court presumed the missing records supported the lower court's decision. It upheld the joint legal custody and the primary physical custody determinations, finding they were supported by the evidence. However, the Court of Appeals reversed one part of the order. It held that by leaving Aaron's parenting time to be determined entirely by the reunification specialist, the district court improperly handed off decision-making authority that only a court can exercise. The court sent the case back so the district court can decide the parenting-time schedule itself and spell it out with specific times and terms.