Nevada family-law case summaries

After a wife won a divorce with an allowance for her own support and $100 a month for the couple's minor child, the husband waited more than a year and then asked the court to strike the child support item. He claimed his lawyer had been told not to consent to it, that it violated a pre-trial settlement agreement and a trust deed securing that agreement, and that the wife had committed a fraud on the court. The district court held a full hearing and denied the motion, and he appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed without reaching the merits. The divorce decree itself said the allowance could be modified, so the court below had power to change it on a proper showing - but this motion did not claim the parties' circumstances had changed; it asked the court to rewrite the original decree. More fundamentally, none of the facts the husband relied on appeared in the ordinary court record; they could only be brought before the supreme court by a bill of exceptions settled under the 1915 statute, and no bill of exceptions was in the record. With no error appearing on the face of the record proper, the court had to affirm.