Nevada family-law case summaries

Tarik Hacham and Dounia Sebai married in 2011 and had two children. In 2020, during a period of marital strain, the family took an extended trip that ended in Morocco. There, after a heated argument, Tarik took Dounia's and the children's passports and refused to return them. Tarik filed for divorce in a Moroccan court, which denied his requests to bar the children from leaving Morocco and ordered him to return the passports or face a daily fine. He did neither. Dounia, meanwhile, filed for divorce in Nevada and obtained an emergency order allowing her to get temporary replacement passports; she returned to Las Vegas with the children. The Moroccan court later issued a divorce decree awarding Dounia primary custody. Back in the United States, Tarik at first lived in Arizona and, according to the opinion, exercised less than his agreed parenting time or none at all before moving to Las Vegas in September 2022. During the Nevada divorce case, a discovery commissioner found that most of Tarik's responses to Dounia's requests for financial information were inadequate and that he had not acted in good faith. The commissioner ordered him to fully comply by a deadline or face a "negative inference" penalty - meaning that any information he withheld would be treated as supporting Dounia's side of the case. The district court adopted that order without objection from either party. After a trial, the district court awarded the parties joint legal custody but gave Dounia primary physical custody, finding that the statutory "best interest of the child" factors were either neutral or favored her. The court also ordered the Moroccan apartment sold with the proceeds split equally, and ordered Tarik to pay Dounia an equalization payment of roughly $51,000 because about $102,000 of the $160,000 he had withdrawn from his 401(k) retirement account - money both sides agreed belonged to the marital community - could not be traced to legitimate community expenses. Throughout the case, the court repeatedly questioned Tarik's credibility, noting contradictory statements and testimony belied by documents in evidence. On appeal, the Court of Appeals rejected all three of Tarik's challenges. First, it refused to consider his argument that the Moroccan decree - which he claimed favored Dounia solely because she is the children's mother - violated his equal protection rights, because he never raised that argument in the district court and did not cogently argue it on appeal. In any event, the court concluded the custody decision rested on a comprehensive best-interest analysis in which the Moroccan decree was only one factor. Second, the court held the negative inference did not violate Tarik's due process rights, because he had specific notice at the discovery hearing that withheld information would be construed against him and had time to comply before the penalty took effect; and it held the district court properly treated the Moroccan apartment as community property, since Tarik's only support for his separate-property claim was a bare statement that he "bought a condo in 2008 prior to the marriage," with no documentation. Third, the court upheld the 401(k) ruling, because Tarik's evidence traced only about $57,000 of the $160,000 to community obligations, leaving roughly $102,000 unaccounted for. The court also held that Tarik waived his argument about the tax consequences of the 401(k) withdrawal by not raising it at trial.

Jared and Randell Cleland were married and share three minor children; both initially lived in Nevada. After the marriage broke down, Jared moved to Hurricane, Utah, and took the two youngest children with him. Randell filed for divorce and asked for primary physical custody of the two youngest children, arguing the oldest child was not part of the case because Jared was not that child's biological father. Jared countered that he had adopted the oldest child and asked for primary physical custody of the children so they could live with him in Utah. While the case was pending, a temporary order let Jared keep primary physical custody of the two youngest children, with Randell having weekend parenting time. At an evidentiary hearing, the two parents told very different stories. Randell testified she had agreed only that the children could stay with Jared for most of the summer and always intended for them to live and attend school in Nevada. Jared testified that Randell had orally agreed the two youngest children could live with him and attend school in Utah, and he pointed to Facebook Messenger exchanges as proof. Randell said those messages concerned only the logistics of summer parenting time. She acknowledged deleting some messages but said they were messages she inadvertently sent while her phone was in her pocket or that contained typos. Jared acknowledged that after being served with the divorce complaint, he was upset by Randell's custody request and, out of frustration, did not bring the children to Las Vegas for her previously agreed parenting time. The district court sided with Randell. It found that Jared was the legal father of all three children because he had signed voluntary acknowledgments of paternity, but it denied his relocation request, found the parties' messages were ambiguous and did not show Randell had consented to the move, awarded the parties joint legal custody, and gave Randell primary physical custody. Jared then asked the court to reconsider, arguing the deleted messages should have triggered a legal presumption that they were harmful to Randell's case - in other words, that the court should have assumed the deleted messages showed she consented to the move. The court denied reconsideration, finding that both parties had testified about the messages and that any information in them had little bearing on its relocation decision. The Nevada Court of Appeals affirmed. It explained that when no custody order exists, one parent may not move a child out of state over the other parent's objection without a court order allowing the move. The appellate court held that the district court's detailed findings on the relocation factors and the children's best interests were supported by substantial evidence - among them, that Jared moved without adequate housing for the children, that he used the relocation to frustrate Randell's parenting time, and that separating the youngest children from their older sibling caused them emotional pain. On the deleted messages, the court explained that a parent seeking the adverse-evidence presumption must show the evidence was destroyed with intent to harm, and Jared failed to meet that burden. Because appellate courts do not reweigh evidence or second-guess credibility findings, the Court of Appeals found no abuse of discretion and affirmed.

This case is a dispute between two parents, Austin Patterson and Kalena Wainwright, over the custody of and financial support for their minor child. Wainwright originally asked the court for sole legal custody and primary physical custody, along with child support that would include child care costs (which she said ran about $2,000 per month). Patterson answered and asked for joint legal and physical custody. Both parents submitted financial disclosure forms: Wainwright reported earning about $5,934 per month, and Patterson reported earning $1,950 per month. At first, the court entered a temporary order giving both parents joint legal and physical custody and directing Wainwright to pay Patterson $328 per month in temporary support. Wainwright later asked the court to change that arrangement, arguing that she was the child's primary guardian and was paying the child's ongoing care and education costs. She also raised concerns about Patterson's conduct. Patterson opposed her request and disputed her allegations. After an evidentiary hearing where both parents testified, the district court entered a written order. It kept joint legal custody but gave Wainwright primary physical custody. The court walked through the "best interests of the child" factors that Nevada law requires it to consider and found several of them favored Wainwright. Among its findings: Patterson did not give credible testimony about the child's medical issues, failed to make sure the child received proper medical care and physical therapy (including for the child's toe walking), did not communicate with Wainwright about the child's medical needs, kept two dogs in his home even though the child has allergy-induced asthma and is allergic to dogs, and did not work full-time. Because of these findings, the court also decided Wainwright should have the final say on medical decisions if the parents disagreed. On money, the parties agreed after the hearing that the child would attend a child care program costing $1,375 per month. The court ordered that cost split evenly, so each parent would pay $687.50 per month. The court also split the child's medical costs and gave Wainwright $52.83 per month for Patterson's share of the medical insurance premium. The court calculated Patterson's basic support at $312 per month based on his stated income, declined to increase (impute) his income even though he mentioned "side gigs," and declined to reduce his obligation for his other children. In total, Patterson's monthly support obligation came to $1,052.33. Patterson appealed. He argued the court got the custody decision wrong, misread his testimony, focused too much on his low income, wrongly refused to lower his support for his other children, and should not have made him pay $687.50 for child care, which he said was really a preschool and could have been cheaper. The appeals court ruled partly for each side. On the custody decision and the basic $312 support calculation, the court explained that a party who appeals must provide transcripts of the hearings where the evidence was presented. Patterson requested transcripts but never filed them with the court. Without the transcripts, the appeals court said it had to assume the missing records supported the district judge's findings, so it upheld those parts of the decision. But on the child care costs, the appeals court found a problem it could see on the face of the order itself. Nevada regulations require a court to consider whether child care costs are reasonable and whether splitting them is fair (equitable). The district court's order did not make findings on either point, and it did not explain how an even split was fair given that Patterson earns only $1,950 per month while his total support obligation climbed to $1,052.33. The court also did not make a finding on whether the parents had actually agreed to split the child care costs equally (as opposed to merely agreeing on the program). Because the order lacked these findings, the appeals court declined to assume the missing transcripts filled the gap and reversed the child care cost portion, sending it back to the district court to reconsider.

This is a brief procedural order from the Nevada Supreme Court ending an appeal in a child custody case. The person who filed the appeal, Jerrett Jamil Thompson, asked the court on his own (without a lawyer) to drop the appeal. The other side, Stacy Lea Thompson, did not oppose the request. The Supreme Court granted the request and dismissed the appeal. The order does not decide any legal issue about child custody. It simply closes out the appeal because the appealing party chose not to pursue it further.

Cheryl Slader and Cory Colley married in 2007 and have one child. Cory filed for divorce in 2019, and after a trial on custody issues, the district court entered a divorce decree in June 2022 that gave both parents joint legal custody but gave Cory primary physical custody, with parenting time for Cheryl. The decree left some things unfinished - the holiday and parenting-time schedule, and the division of the couple's property and debts. Cheryl tried to appeal that decree right away, but the Nevada Supreme Court dismissed the appeal because the decree was not a "final" order that could be appealed. In July 2023, a different district judge entered an order finishing the custody scheduling issues, and Cheryl appealed again. The Court of Appeals first sorted out what it could and could not review. Because the property-and-debt issues still had not been resolved, there was no final judgment in the case, so the court dismissed the parts of Cheryl's appeal that challenged the bifurcation (splitting) of the trial and the alimony and child support decisions - it had no jurisdiction over those. But a court rule, NRAP 3A(b)(7), allows an appeal from an order that "finally establishes or alters the custody of minor children," so the court could review the custody rulings. The court also declined Cheryl's request to convert the appeal into a petition for a writ of prohibition (an extraordinary court order directed at a lower court), because she cited no supporting authority and because she could already appeal the custody order. On the merits, the court repeatedly ran into a problem with the appellate record - the set of documents an appellant must give the appeals court. Cheryl did not include the district court's discovery or pretrial orders, her answer and counterclaim, her pretrial memorandum, or the trial exhibits. Under Nevada law, when an appellant leaves out documents the appeals court needs, the court presumes the missing documents support the lower court's decision. That presumption defeated her arguments about discovery time, the three-hour trial limit, and much of her evidence-based challenge to the custody ruling. On the custody decision itself, the district court had weighed the statutory "best interest of the child" factors and found most of them equal or inapplicable, but concluded that the nature of the child's relationship with each parent "is the tiebreaker" - the child reported feeling comforted and validated with his father and found his mother "argumentative and unrelenting." Cheryl also argued that Cory had committed domestic violence, which under Nevada law can create a presumption against awarding custody to that parent - but only if proved by clear and convincing evidence after an evidentiary hearing. The district court found her evidence (video without audio that did not show the alleged incident, a notarized letter, and a couples' therapist's testimony about an aggressive outburst in a counseling session) did not meet that standard. The Court of Appeals held that, on the limited record before it, substantial evidence supported those findings, and it would not reweigh evidence or credibility on appeal. Finally, Cheryl argued the district court had to make an express finding under NRS 125C.003(1)(a) that she was unable to care for the child at least 146 days per year before awarding primary physical custody to Cory. The Court of Appeals disagreed, explaining that the statute does not require such a finding and that the sole consideration in a custody determination is the child's best interest. The court affirmed the custody determination.

This case is a dispute between two divorced parents, Tiffany and Christian Olson, over who should have physical custody of their two children, A.O. (born October 2006) and L.O. (born November 2010). When they divorced in 2014, they shared joint legal custody and Tiffany had primary physical custody. Over the following years both parents remarried and Christian's work situation changed. In December 2021, after an evidentiary hearing, the district court found that circumstances had changed and that it was in the children's best interest for Christian to have primary physical custody. The court later ordered Tiffany to pay approximately $900 per month in child support. Less than four months later, in mid-April 2022, Tiffany filed an emergency motion asking the court to temporarily change custody. She claimed Christian had physically abused A.O. two days earlier during a confrontation over A.O.'s cellphone, and that Christian told A.O. to lie to police about it. The district court denied the emergency (ex parte) request but treated the filing as a request for a change of custody and set a hearing. At the January 2023 hearing, the witnesses told very different stories. A.O. testified that her father grabbed her by the chin, straddled her, pulled her hair, hit her in the face with a closed fist, held his arms around her neck, twisted her arm, and threatened her. Christian testified that after he tried to unlock A.O.'s phone using facial recognition, A.O. grabbed his wrist, he lost his balance and fell on her, and she then punched, kicked, and scratched him; he said he moved her to the floor and pinned her wrists until she calmed down, and he denied striking her or touching her neck. Christian's wife Jennifer, the only eyewitness, said she saw A.O. punching, kicking, and scratching Christian and did not see him strike A.O. or put his hands on her neck. The physical evidence and reports were also inconsistent. A.O.'s first written statement to police, made the night of the incident, described her father grabbing her face and arms but did not mention being punched, choked, or having her arm twisted. A second report, made two days later after A.O. spoke with her mother, described punching, hair-grabbing, choking, and an arm-breaking threat. The deputy who took the second report testified he saw only "minute" bruising and no evidence of choking or a punch to the face. A.O. admitted she did not write and had not fully read the affidavit attached to her mother's motion before signing it. Child Protective Services investigated and found the claims unsubstantiated, and Christian was never arrested or charged. A.O. told the CPS worker she felt safe at her father's home and did not think anything like the incident would happen again, and testified nothing similar had happened in the nine months between the incident and the hearing. The district court denied the motion. It found that although Christian and A.O. did have a physical altercation, Christian did not use unlawful force, the incident did not amount to domestic violence, and it was an isolated event that did not qualify as a "substantial change in circumstances." The court concluded the existing custody arrangement remained in the children's best interest. On appeal, the Court of Appeals explained that trial courts have broad discretion over custody, and appellate courts do not reweigh the evidence or reassess who was more believable. Because the district court considered all the evidence, judged the witnesses' credibility, and supported its findings with adequate evidence, the appellate court held there was no abuse of discretion and affirmed.

This case is a custody dispute between two parents. David D. Hines, Jr., filed a second amended complaint asking the court to declare him the child's father (DNA testing showed he was), to put his name on the child's birth certificate, and to give him sole legal and physical custody. He alleged that Boyd had a history of domestic violence and that child protective services had become involved with the child. Boyd did not dispute that Hines was the child's biological father, but she asked for sole legal and physical custody herself and pointed out that Hines lived outside Nevada, in Houston, Texas. The parents agreed on some parenting issues but not all, so the district court held an evidentiary hearing - a court proceeding at which witnesses testify and evidence is presented. Hines testified about learning he was the child's father through DNA testing, about child protective services removing the child from Boyd's custody, and about Boyd refusing to cooperate with court-ordered parenting time in Houston. Boyd testified about her criminal history, including a prior charge for child abuse and neglect and a felony grand larceny conviction, and about a violent incident with a former boyfriend that led child protective services to remove the child from her care for a time. She explained that she no longer had contact with the former boyfriend and that the child had been returned to her. The district court gave the parents joint legal custody but awarded Hines primary physical custody, meaning the child would live primarily with Hines in Texas. The court walked through the "best interest of the child" factors that Nevada law requires courts to consider. It acknowledged that Boyd was the victim of domestic violence, but it also found there had been ongoing domestic violence between Boyd and her former boyfriend that occurred in front of the child - including an incident in which a firearm was discharged - that the child had spent six months in foster care because of the risk of danger, and that Boyd had demonstrated a lack of capacity to protect the child. The court also found Boyd had interfered with Hines' parenting time. On appeal, Boyd argued the district court's findings were not supported by the evidence, that the court failed to properly weigh the required factors, that it did not understand she was the victim in the domestic-violence incident, that it did not let her participate in decision-making about the child, and that it did not consider the disruption of moving the child out of Nevada. The Court of Appeals rejected these arguments. Appellate courts review custody decisions only for an "abuse of discretion" - a deferential standard - and will not re-weigh evidence or second-guess a trial judge's assessments of witness credibility. Because the district court's factual findings were supported by substantial evidence in the record, the Court of Appeals found no abuse of discretion. Boyd also argued that the district court judge was biased against her. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument too, explaining that Boyd had not shown the court's decisions were based on knowledge acquired outside the proceedings or that they reflected "a deep-seated favoritism or antagonism that would make fair judgment impossible." The custody decree was affirmed.

Douglas Brofman and Gina Fiore share one child. Fiore asked the district court to establish a custody arrangement, and Brofman counter-asked for permission to move with the child to Ohio. After hearing evidence, the district court refused to let Brofman relocate, gave both parents joint legal and physical custody, decided where the child would go to school, and set child support. Brofman then filed a series of motions challenging those decisions, including a motion for a new trial. The district court denied those motions, ordered Brofman to pay Fiore's attorney fees on the new-trial motion, and sanctioned him for not signing paperwork needed for the child's passport. Brofman appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court agreed with most of what the district court did. On relocation, the court held that Brofman had not shown a sensible plan, a consistent reason for moving, or a job lined up in Ohio, so denying the move was within the trial court's discretion. On school choice, the court noted Brofman had focused on relocating and did not submit evidence about schools even when given a chance to file a supplemental brief, so the trial court had to work with limited information and reasonably applied the governing factors. On child support, the court held it was permissible to impute income to Brofman because the record showed he was meeting his monthly expenses during his claimed unemployment and had previously earned an income similar to Fiore's. The court also upheld the admission of Fiore's text messages at the hearing and rejected Brofman's challenges to the postjudgment rulings, including the fees award and the sanction. The court reversed course on one issue. Brofman had asked to be reimbursed for loans he said he made to Fiore. The district court refused to hear that request, saying it was not properly pleaded and was barred by the statute of limitations. The Supreme Court concluded that Brofman's pleading was good enough to put Fiore on notice of the claim and that, because the district court did not let Brofman put on any evidence about which debts he meant, the record was too thin to say the limitations period barred the claim. The court vacated that part of the order and sent the case back for the district court to consider Brofman's financial claims.

Douglas Brofman and Gina Fiore share one child. Fiore asked the family court to establish a custody arrangement, and Brofman responded by asking to relocate with the child to Ohio. After an evidentiary hearing, the district court denied the relocation request, awarded the parents joint legal and physical custody, decided where the child would attend school, and set child support. Brofman then filed several postjudgment motions, including a motion for a new trial. The district court denied those motions, awarded Fiore her attorney fees, and sanctioned Brofman for not complying with a Parenting Coordinator's order regarding the child's passport. The Nevada Supreme Court agreed with most of what the district court did. It held that the district court reasonably concluded Brofman had not shown a sensible plan or good-faith reason for moving — he had no job lined up in Ohio, no clear post-move plan, and his stated reasons for wanting to move kept changing. The Court also upheld the school-choice decision, noting that Brofman, who was focused on his relocation request, did not submit evidence or a supplemental brief on schools even when the district court invited him to do so. On child support, the Court agreed the district court could "impute" income to Brofman — that is, treat him as if he were earning what he could earn — because the evidence suggested he was voluntarily underemployed. The Court also upheld the denial of a new trial, the attorney-fees award against Brofman, and the sanction for not signing the child's passport paperwork. The Court parted ways with the district court on one point: Brofman's claim that Fiore should reimburse him for loans he said he had made to her. The district court refused to hear that issue, saying it was not properly pleaded and was barred by the statute of limitations. The Supreme Court concluded that Brofman's pleading was good enough to put Fiore on notice of the claim, and that the record was too undeveloped to determine whether the statute of limitations actually barred the debts. The Court therefore sent that one issue back to the district court for further proceedings, while leaving the rest of the rulings in place.

Amy Luciano tried to appeal several orders from her family-court case to the Nevada Supreme Court without an attorney. Before the Supreme Court can decide whether a lower court got something right or wrong, it first has to confirm that it has the legal authority - called jurisdiction - to hear the appeal at all. Here, the court found it did not. There were three problems. First, one of the orders Luciano wanted to challenge - the order dated May 11, 2023 - was already being appealed in a separate case (Docket No. 86782). A party cannot file a second appeal from the same order. Second, to the extent the May 1, 2023, and May 11, 2023, orders could be appealed, Luciano's notice of appeal was filed on November 30, 2023, which was well past the 30-day deadline that runs from the date written notice of entry of the order is served. A late notice of appeal does not give the Supreme Court jurisdiction. Third, the rest of the orders she wanted to challenge are not the kind of orders that Nevada law allows to be appealed in the first place. Because of these jurisdictional problems, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal without reaching the substance of any of Luciano's complaints about the lower court rulings.

Jeremy and Kelly Herrmann were married in 2007 and have two minor children. In April 2022, the district court entered a default divorce decree - a divorce judgment issued after Jeremy failed to participate in the proceedings. Later in 2022, Jeremy filed many motions asking the court to enforce the divorce decree or to hold Kelly in contempt, mostly over how property was divided and over property he said had been left out of the decree, including a Cummins engine and Kelly's pensions. At a November 2022 hearing, Kelly said Jeremy had a federal pension he had not disclosed before the divorce decree was entered, which Jeremy denied. In November 2022, the court resolved 31 of Jeremy's motions, ordering that several mistakenly omitted items be divided equally. The written order mentioned the Cummins engine but did not decide that issue. The court told both parties to file proof of their retirement accounts within 30 days, warning that any claims would be treated as given up if they did not. Jeremy did not file proof of his pension. In January 2023, the court entered an order awarding each party their own pension as separate property. Jeremy then filed a "motion to set aside default judgment," asking the court to undo the pension order, along with seven more motions about withheld, damaged, or omitted property, again including the Cummins engine. The court denied all but one of the motions, found Jeremy was filing piecemeal motions to harass Kelly, and ordered each party to keep any remaining community property in their possession except items specifically awarded to the other in the decree or a prior order. The court also, on its own, set a hearing to consider whether Jeremy should be declared a vexatious litigant. Jeremy appealed. The Court of Appeals ruled on three of Jeremy's challenges and declined to reach others. First, it upheld the denial of his request to undo the pension order, noting he had been given ample time to obtain his pension information but did not do so, did not ask for more time, and did not, on appeal, challenge that finding. Second, on the Cummins engine, the court explained that a party can ask a court to divide an asset mistakenly left out of a divorce decree within three years of discovering the mistake, but Jeremy did not point to evidence showing the engine was an omitted asset rather than part of a vehicle already awarded to Kelly. Third, the court rejected Jeremy's claim of judicial bias, finding he had not shown the bias came from outside the case or reflected the kind of deep-seated antagonism that would make fair judgment impossible. The court also dismissed the appeal to the extent Jeremy tried to appeal from the order merely setting a future vexatious litigant hearing, because no statute or court rule allows an appeal from such an order. Claims about child custody and other matters were not addressed because they related to earlier orders not timely appealed or were not raised below.

Jose Zirate and Blanca M. Salazar divorced in April 2022 through a joint petition. Under the divorce decree, Salazar had primary physical custody of their three children, and Zirate had parenting time. A few months later, after remarrying and facing worsening finances - in part, the opinion notes, because Zirate had not paid his child support - Salazar asked the court for permission to move to Kansas with the children to live with her new husband. Zirate opposed the move and asked for primary custody himself. By the time of the evidentiary hearing, Salazar had narrowed her request: she still wanted to take the youngest child (age four) to Kansas, but she dropped her request to relocate with the two older children (roughly 16 and 17), who preferred to stay in Nevada. After hearing testimony from both parents and the two older children, the district court split custody: Zirate received primary physical custody of the two older children, while Salazar kept primary physical custody of the youngest child and was allowed to move to Kansas with him. A key part of the court's reasoning was its finding that Zirate had committed acts of domestic violence against the two older children. Under Nevada law, a finding of domestic violence by clear and convincing evidence creates a rebuttable presumption - a starting assumption the other side can try to overcome - that giving the abusive parent joint or sole physical custody is not in the child's best interest. Zirate appealed only the ruling letting Salazar relocate with the youngest child. The Court of Appeals rejected each of his arguments. First, he complained that Salazar had already moved to Kansas before getting the court's permission; the court explained that Salazar left all three children with Zirate when she moved and did not take the child with her, which Nevada law does not prohibit. Second, he argued the district court leaned too heavily on the domestic violence findings - which the district court had called "a huge factor in this case" - because there was no evidence he abused the youngest child; the appellate court explained that the statute requires courts to consider domestic violence against "the child, a parent of the child or any other person residing with the child," so violence against the youngest child's siblings counted. Third, he claimed Salazar manipulated the older children's testimony about being struck; the court found no evidence of manipulation in the record and declined to second-guess the district court's credibility determinations. Zirate also argued the district court got the school comparison wrong (the child attended a private Nevada school with a 10:1 student-teacher ratio, while Salazar proposed a Kansas public school). The appellate court held that even if there were an error, it did not prejudice Zirate because the district court's emphasis on domestic violence made it "readily apparent that the court would have granted Salazar's motion regardless of which school was better." As to separating the youngest child from his siblings, the district court had expressly considered that issue and concluded that protecting the child from domestic violence outweighed keeping the siblings together, especially given the large age gap and a parenting time schedule that reunites all three children during school breaks. Finally, the appellate court found substantial evidence supporting the district court's finding that Salazar was the parent more likely to allow the child a continuing relationship with the other parent - including testimony that Zirate had stopped paying child support while insisting Salazar's parenting time occur in Nevada, and that he had once prevented an agreed trip to Kansas by removing the child from the state himself. Finding no abuse of discretion, the Court of Appeals affirmed. In a footnote, the court reminded the district court that when the domestic violence presumption is triggered, it must make findings that the custody or visitation arrangement adequately protects the child and other victims - but the court did not reach the sufficiency of those findings because Zirate did not address them and Salazar did not cross-appeal.

This is a child custody case in which one parent, Giana L. Curreri, tried to appeal a Washoe County family court order that changed the custody arrangement. Before the Nevada Supreme Court could consider the merits of her appeal, it had to confirm it had authority (jurisdiction) to hear the case at all. The court found a timing problem. On December 11, 2023, Curreri filed a document she titled a "Complaint and Objection to Final Order after Trial on the Grounds of Inconsistencies with Court's Statements." The Supreme Court treated that filing as effectively a motion for reconsideration. Under Nevada's appellate rules, certain post-judgment motions - sometimes called "tolling motions" - pause the clock for filing an appeal until the district court rules on them in writing. If a party files a notice of appeal while such a motion is still pending, the notice has no legal effect. That is what happened here. Curreri filed her notice of appeal on December 20, 2023, while her tolling motion was still unresolved. Because of that, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal as filed too early. The dismissal is procedural; the court did not reach any question about whether the custody modification was proper.

Zachary and Sarah Barton divorced in 2021 and have three minor children. Under their stipulated divorce decree, the parents shared joint legal custody, but Sarah had primary physical custody, with Zachary having parenting time each weekend from Friday evening to Sunday evening. In January 2022, Zachary asked the court to give him primary physical custody or, alternatively, joint physical custody, and asked the court to interview the children. He alleged, among other things, that Sarah's new boyfriend was abusive to the children. Sarah opposed and filed her own request for sole physical custody. The court opened discovery and scheduled a calendar call (a scheduling and readiness hearing) for December 5, 2022, and a non-jury trial for December 19, 2022. Zachary did not file a required pretrial memorandum and did not appear at the December 5 calendar call. After waiting about 15 minutes, the court heard testimony from Sarah about the abuse allegations and then entered a default judgment - a judgment entered against a party who fails to appear or respond - giving Sarah sole physical custody. About a week later, Zachary asked the court to reconsider or set aside that ruling. He argued that default judgments should not be used in child custody cases because they do not consider what is best for the children, and that his failure to appear was not intentional but resulted from a misunderstanding about the hearing's start time. According to Zachary, a court-provided videoconference link listed the hearing as starting at 4:15 p.m. (UTC), even though the court's orders said the calendar call began at 8:15 a.m., which caused him to try to attend at the wrong time. The district court denied both sides' requests without oral argument, finding that Zachary had not shown the prior order was clearly wrong under the reconsideration standard or that he qualified for relief from the judgment. The Court of Appeals reversed. It explained that Nevada law does not allow child custody to be decided by default. Child custody must be decided based on the best interest of the children, not simply because a parent failed to show up. Because the district court's order relied on Zachary's failure to appear and the court's power to sanction that failure - rather than on an analysis of the children's best interest - the appellate court concluded the district court abused its discretion. It reversed both the custody order and the order denying post-judgment relief, and sent the case back for further proceedings, including, if necessary, an evidentiary hearing on custody.

This case is about which country's courts get to decide a custody dispute over a young girl, Z.K., born in 2018 in the Philippines to an American father (Kemp) and a Filipina mother (Centeno). After the parents' relationship ended in 2022, Kemp filed for custody in a Nevada district court. Centeno asked the court to throw the case out, arguing Nevada had no authority over a child whose life was centered in the Philippines. States and countries follow a uniform rulebook called the UCCJEA to decide which court should hear a custody case. The general rule is that custody cases belong in the child's "home state" - where the child has lived with a parent for at least the six months before the case was filed. For UCCJEA purposes, Nevada treats foreign countries the same as U.S. states. The district court looked at where Z.K. actually was during the six months before Kemp filed his complaint. Z.K. spent most of that window (March 7 to July 24, 2022) in the Philippines and a smaller portion (July 25 to September 7, 2022) in Las Vegas. The judge had to decide whether her time in Las Vegas was just a "temporary absence" from the Philippines. The judge concluded it was, because Z.K. had always returned to the same address in the Philippines after trips, and because she had spent the vast majority of her short life - about three years and five months out of four years - there. Kemp argued the judge should have given more weight to other evidence suggesting the family was relocating to Las Vegas: the mother's tourist visa, her alleged intent to live and work in Nevada, and Z.K.'s enrollment in a Las Vegas school and dance classes. The district court considered that evidence but found it unconvincing. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed. It explained that the district court's factual findings get deference if supported by substantial evidence, and here they were. The Supreme Court also noted that other states look at the "totality of the circumstances" when deciding whether an absence is temporary, and Nevada's approach should be harmonized with those states. Because Z.K.'s home state was the Philippines and the Philippines had not declined jurisdiction, Nevada courts had no authority to hear the case. The Supreme Court also flagged one minor mistake: the district court cited an unpublished Court of Appeals order, which Nevada appellate rules forbid. The Supreme Court called this harmless error because the result would be the same without that citation.

This was an appeal from a divorce decree in an Elko County child-custody case. Before the Nevada Supreme Court could consider whether the trial judge made any mistakes, it had to confirm it had authority - called jurisdiction - to hear the appeal in the first place. The court found it did not. The reason is procedural. After the trial court entered the divorce decree, the appellant filed a motion for reconsideration in the trial court. Under Nevada's appellate rules, certain post-judgment motions, including this kind of motion, "toll" - that is, pause - the clock for filing an appeal until the trial court decides the motion in a written order. The appellant filed his notice of appeal before the trial court issued a written order resolving the reconsideration motion. That made the notice of appeal "premature." Because the appeal was premature, the Supreme Court concluded it had no jurisdiction and dismissed the case. The court noted, however, that a premature notice of appeal does not strip the district court of its own authority - meaning the trial court can still rule on the pending reconsideration motion.

Heavenly Hope Elmore and Bryce Drew Herrin are the parents of two young children, J.H. and A.H. They were never married. After they separated, Elmore moved with the children from Nevada to Kansas in April 2022, with Herrin's permission. In May 2022, Herrin went to court asking for sole legal and sole physical custody of the children. Elmore responded by also asking for sole custody. Early in the case, the court issued a temporary order giving the parents joint legal custody, giving Elmore primary physical custody, and giving Herrin parenting time consisting of three video calls per week and one four-day visit. At the custody trial in January 2023, the parents agreed to joint legal custody and each said they wanted primary (not sole) physical custody. The judge heard testimony from Herrin, Elmore, Herrin's sister, and Herrin's father. Herrin testified that after Elmore moved to Kansas he had very little contact with the children and that all contact was blocked. Elmore testified about concerns over the children's care during Herrin's parenting time and acknowledged that she had cut off communication with Herrin after moving, saying she was afraid he would take the children. After the trial, the judge issued a final order giving Herrin primary physical custody. The judge briefly discussed the legal factors used to decide a child's best interest but then gave only a three-sentence explanation for the decision, essentially saying both parents care about the children, neither has behaved perfectly, conflict between them is high, and that it was in the children's best interest for the parties to share joint legal custody with Herrin having primary physical custody. Elmore appealed. The Court of Appeals explained that Nevada law requires a trial court to consider specific factors when deciding a child's best interest and to connect those factors to its final custody decision with enough detail that a reviewing court can tell whether the decision was made for appropriate reasons. The court found that here the trial judge had mostly summarized the trial testimony without saying which factors favored which parent and without explaining why it awarded primary physical custody to Herrin. Because the trial court's order did not adequately explain how the custody decision served the children's best interest, the Court of Appeals concluded the trial court abused its discretion, reversed the decision, and sent the case back for further proceedings. The appellate court left the current custody arrangement in place while the case is on remand, and said the trial court would have discretion to decide whether a new evidentiary hearing is necessary.

Sharon and Kenneth Wilson were married in 2004 and had five children together. Sharon filed for divorce and asked the court for various custody arrangements and for an order requiring Kenneth to pay her attorney fees and costs. Kenneth opposed her requests and asked for primary physical custody of the children. According to the financial disclosure forms, Kenneth's average gross monthly income was $7,810 and Sharon's was $1,560. At trial, Sharon testified her income was about $1,200 per month and Kenneth's about $8,100 per month. The couple settled most of their disputes, including how to divide their property, but they could not agree on child custody or on who should pay attorney fees. After a trial, the district court denied Sharon's request that Kenneth pay her attorney fees. When Sharon asked for fees, she specifically pointed to the large gap between the two spouses' incomes. But when the court denied her request, it did not mention that income gap. In its written divorce decree, the court explained that each party should pay their own attorney fees because neither side won (neither was a "prevailing party") and both acted in good faith. Sharon appealed, arguing that the court was required to consider the difference in the spouses' incomes before deciding the attorney-fee question, and that it failed to do so. The Court of Appeals agreed with Sharon. Under Nevada law, when a court decides whether to award attorney fees in a divorce case, it must consider the disparity (the difference) between the parties' incomes. The appellate court found that the district court did not do this - it did not make any findings about the income difference and appeared to rely only on the fact that neither party had "prevailed." The court also rejected Kenneth's argument that the income difference did not matter because the court gave fees to neither side; the appellate court explained that the income disparity must be considered even when a court declines to award fees. Because the district court did not apply the required legal standard, the Court of Appeals reversed the denial of attorney fees and sent the case back for further proceedings.

Michael and Elyse Xavier are divorced parents of two minor children. When they divorced, they jointly asked the court for joint legal custody, with Elyse having primary physical custody, and the court agreed. Over the following years, both parents filed motions to change the arrangement, and most recently the court had ordered that the parents share joint legal and physical custody. In 2023, Michael asked the court to give him primary physical custody of both children. He alleged that the oldest child's school performance was declining and that the oldest child had engaged in sexual activity with his girlfriend at Elyse's home, arguing the child was not receiving appropriate supervision in Elyse's care. The district court held an evidentiary hearing at which both parents testified. Michael said the oldest child's grades had worsened because he could not help with homework when the child was with Elyse, and expressed his belief that Elyse was too permissive. Elyse testified that she believed Michael was too strict and had been physically and emotionally abusive toward the children, and that the children should be free to choose which parent to spend time with. The court discussed the issues with the oldest child, who wished to keep the current custodial arrangement. The district court denied Michael's request. In its written order, the court found it was in the children's best interest to leave joint physical custody in place, directed the parties to work together to improve the children's grades, directed Elyse to permit Michael to help with homework at her home, ordered the children to attend counseling, and noted it would reconsider its custody order if the children's grades did not improve. The Nevada Court of Appeals reversed - not because it decided who should have custody, but because the district court's order did not contain the specific findings Nevada law requires. Under Nevada law, before modifying (or refusing to modify) physical custody, a court must consider whether there has been a substantial change in circumstances affecting the welfare of the children and must make specific findings about the children's best interest under a list of statutory factors. Here, the district court's order stated only that it "believes it is in the Minor Children's best interest for the Court's previous order of joint physical custody to remain in place," without analyzing the statutory best-interest factors or the change-in-circumstances question. The appellate court explained that without such findings, it could not meaningfully review whether the custody decision was appropriate, and it sent the case back for the district court to do that analysis. The appeals court rejected Michael's separate claim that the district judge was biased against him, concluding he had not shown the kind of favoritism or antagonism the law requires for that claim. While the case proceeds on remand, the current custody arrangement stays in place, subject to modification by the district court to comport with current circumstances.

Florentina Santos Garcia and Hugo Angel Dorado Rosales were never married but had two children, one born in Nevada in 2007 and one born in Mexico in 2009. After the couple's relationship ended in 2009, Florentina moved to Mexico and raised both children there from 2009 to 2019. When the children came to Nevada to visit Hugo and other family, Hugo kept them in Nevada beyond the scheduled visit. Hugo then went to court in Nevada seeking sole legal and primary physical custody. Florentina responded by asking the same court to order the children returned to Mexico under the Hague Convention, an international agreement (put into effect in the United States by a federal law) that generally requires a child who has been wrongfully removed from their home country to be sent back. She argued Hugo had wrongfully kept the children in the United States. The district court agreed with Florentina and ordered the children returned to Mexico, finding Hugo had wrongfully retained them. But the court refused to make Hugo pay Florentina's attorney fees and costs, saying it believed both parties' positions were reasonable. Florentina appealed only that fee decision; nobody challenged the return of the children. The federal statute Florentina relied on says a court that orders a child returned "shall" order the losing party to pay the winning party's necessary expenses - including court costs and legal fees - unless the losing party shows such an order would be "clearly inappropriate." In everyday terms, the person who wins a return petition is presumed to get their expenses paid, and it is the losing party's job to prove why that would be unfair. The Court of Appeals concluded that the district court did not apply this rule. The lower court simply denied fees at the hearing without addressing the presumption that Florentina was entitled to an award or considering whether Hugo had shown an award would be "clearly inappropriate." Because the district court did not perform this required analysis, the appellate court held it had abused its discretion and sent the case back so the correct standard could be applied. The court also rejected Hugo's argument that Florentina gave up her fee claim by not filing a separate written motion. The appellate court explained the federal statute does not require a separate motion, that the Nevada rule requiring a motion applies only unless a statute provides otherwise, and that asking again would have been pointless because the court had already denied the request orally and in writing. On remand, the district court should allow Florentina to file a statement of her fees and costs, determine the amount necessarily incurred to win her petition, and then decide whether Hugo has shown an award would be clearly inappropriate.

This case involves a dispute between Mary Lorenzo and Pierre Gendebien arising from a complaint for maternity (a court action to establish a legal mother-child relationship). The trial court denied and dismissed the complaint, and both sides took the case to the Nevada Supreme Court - Lorenzo by appeal, Gendebien by cross-appeal. Before reaching the merits, the Supreme Court noticed a problem with its own jurisdiction (its legal authority to hear the case). In Nevada, a party generally can appeal only from a "final judgment" - meaning an order that wraps up all the issues in the case. Here, the order being appealed left open the question of non-parent visitation, so it did not finish the case. The court also flagged a later order entered on August 28, 2023, that changed the original order, but that later order only granted Lorenzo permission to amend her complaint, which is not the kind of order one can appeal from either. The Supreme Court asked both parties to explain why the appeals should not be dismissed. Gendebien conceded the order was not appealable. Lorenzo agreed with the court's analysis and asked that the appeals be dismissed. The court therefore dismissed both the appeal and the cross-appeal without reaching the substance of the maternity dispute.

This case is a family dispute over how much time a grandmother gets to spend with her grandchildren. Kimberly White is the grandmother of three children. Their mother is Tamika Beatrice Jones, and their father is Kimberly's son, Christopher Judson. According to the opinion, the case began in 2019 when Tamika filed for custody of the children against Christopher, and the two parents agreed to share joint legal and physical custody. The following year, Kimberly joined the case (no one objected), asking for custody herself or, if not that, for third-party visitation rights. The court gave her temporary visitation for a while, but her relationship with Tamika got worse. Eventually Tamika stopped letting Kimberly see the children and moved with them to Michigan. In February 2023, the district court held a hearing where both Kimberly and Tamika testified. Neither side submitted any documents or other exhibits. Afterward, the court issued a written order giving Kimberly visitation over Labor Day and Memorial Day weekends (to take place in Michigan) plus weekly phone calls with extra calls on birthdays and certain holidays. The court noted that both parents did not want Kimberly to have visitation, which under Nevada law creates a legal presumption against giving a grandparent visitation. Even so, after weighing the factors the statute requires, the court decided that keeping a relationship with Kimberly was in the children's best interest. On appeal, Kimberly argued mainly that she should get more visitation time than the court gave her, and she raised complaints about how the hearing was conducted. The appeals court explained that it reviews visitation decisions for "abuse of discretion" - meaning the court will not overturn the decision unless the judge acted unreasonably - and that it accepts the trial judge's factual findings as long as they are supported by reasonable evidence. The appeals court gave several reasons for turning down Kimberly's arguments. First, she did not clearly explain why the reduction in time was wrong, and she did not provide the appeals court with a written transcript of the hearing. Under Nevada rules, when the person appealing fails to supply the necessary record, the appeals court assumes the missing material supports the trial court's decision. Second, even from the record it did have, the court found the trial judge had properly applied the statute and reasonably tied the reduced visitation to the high level of conflict between the parties - conflict for which the judge found Kimberly was at least partly responsible, including that she had tried to take over parental responsibilities and had blocked the older children from speaking with their mother during a period they lived with her. Kimberly also claimed the reduction was the product of the judge's bias against her because she had earlier filed a separate court petition. The appeals court rejected this, explaining that bias requires proof the judge relied on information from outside the case or showed such deep hostility that fair judgment was impossible - and Kimberly had not shown that. Finally, Kimberly argued the trial court failed to investigate her allegations of child abuse, would not let her discuss prior abuse-related proceedings, and did not consider certain child-protective-services reports and a child interview. The appeals court found she had not shown any error: the missing transcript meant it could not tell what was actually raised, the trial court had earlier found the abuse allegations were never substantiated, and no exhibits were introduced at the hearing. The court also noted it will not second-guess the trial judge's handling of conflicting evidence or the judge's credibility calls. It therefore affirmed the decision.

Brittany and Joey divorced in 2016 and share three children. Under a 2021 agreement, the parents shared joint legal custody, but Joey had sole authority over schooling, medical, and extracurricular decisions, primary physical custody of the two older children (J.O. and R.O.), and joint physical custody of the youngest (C.O.) with Brittany. In September 2022, Brittany asked the court to give her sole legal and primary physical custody of all three children. In sworn filings, she alleged, among other things, that Joey gave alcohol to J.O., failed to address J.O.'s suicidal thoughts, called their daughter R.O. "fat" and put her on a restrictive diet, screamed at the children and broke things in the home, and created an environment where the children felt they "walk[ed] on eggshells" around him. Joey denied the allegations and filed his own countermotion seeking primary physical custody of C.O., alleging among other things that Brittany had left the children for three months, entered a relationship with an ex-felon who abused her in front of the children, assaulted Joey's girlfriend, skipped most of her parenting time, and tried to unilaterally pull the children out of their schools. At a November 2022 hearing, the district court ordered the children to be interviewed by the Family Mediation Center (FMC), ordered the parents to attempt mediation, and set a December 2022 "return" hearing. The court indicated that the return hearing would focus on the FMC child interview report and mediation - not the children's custody status. But at the December hearing, after reviewing the interview report and hearing argument, the judge placed both parents under oath, questioned only Joey, and then denied both motions on the spot, concluding neither parent had shown enough of a change in circumstances to justify a full evidentiary hearing (a hearing where the parties can present evidence and question witnesses). The Court of Appeals reversed for two reasons. First, the court held that the district court violated Brittany's due process rights - the constitutional guarantee of notice and a fair opportunity to be heard before important rights are affected. Nothing in the district court's written order or oral statements told the parents that the December hearing might end with a final custody decision, and the hearing itself was one-sided: only Joey was allowed to testify under oath, while Brittany never got the same chance. Second, the appellate court held that both parents' sworn allegations - taken as true, as the law requires at this stage - were detailed enough to establish a "prima facie case" (a threshold showing) for modifying custody, which entitled each of them to a full evidentiary hearing. Because neither parent's allegations conclusively proved the other's false, the district court was not allowed to weigh credibility or pick between the competing stories without holding a hearing. The case goes back to the district court for an evidentiary hearing on whether changing custody serves the children's best interests.

This is a short procedural order, not a ruling on the merits of any family law dispute. Cody C. Walker filed an appeal from a postjudgment order in a child-custody-related family law case. He represented himself, without a lawyer. When someone files an appeal in the Nevada Supreme Court, they must file certain paperwork on a schedule - including a "docketing statement" (a form identifying the case and the issues) and a "fast track statement" (a short brief used in family-law appeals). The court told Mr. Walker on October 13, 2023, that his docketing statement was due November 3, 2023, and his fast track statement was due November 22, 2023. He missed both deadlines. On November 28, 2023, the court issued a second order giving Mr. Walker until December 12, 2023, to file the missing documents and warning him that if he did not, his appeal could be dismissed as abandoned. He still did not file the documents and did not otherwise contact the court. Because of that, the Supreme Court concluded that he had abandoned the appeal and dismissed it. The order does not address the underlying child-custody dispute or the merits of the postjudgment order Mr. Walker was trying to challenge.

This is a one-page clerk's order ending an appeal before the Nevada Supreme Court ever reached the merits. The appellant - the party who had asked the higher court to review a lower-court decision in a child custody case - decided she no longer wished to pursue the appeal. She filed a notice withdrawing it. Under the Nevada Rules of Appellate Procedure, a party who has filed an appeal can ask the court to dismiss it voluntarily. The Supreme Court granted that request and closed the case. The order does not describe the underlying custody dispute, the trial court's ruling, or the reasons for the withdrawal.

Saad Halim Habashi and Sally Kamel-Kirollos married in 2002 and had three children. After their marriage ran into difficulties, Kamel-Kirollos filed for divorce in 2020, representing herself. Habashi, also representing himself, filed an answer and asked for joint legal and physical custody. Early in the case, the district court ordered Habashi to pay temporary child support. When the couple's oldest child turned 18 (reached "the age of majority"), Habashi asked the court to reduce his monthly payments, but the court did not rule on some of those requests. The court held a trial and entered a divorce decree in December 2021. Habashi then filed a motion the court treated as a request to reconsider, which the court granted, leading to a second trial. At the second trial, both parties testified about their income, their appliance repair business, their marital home, an apartment building they owned in Egypt, and their children. The court found that Habashi did not testify credibly about his income and business, and that he had moved to Egypt for a period and mismanaged his business to make it look like he earned little. The court decided several issues. It valued the business using the couple's 2019 and 2020 tax returns (because neither side provided an appraisal and Habashi had withheld business information during discovery), setting its value at $73,333. It valued the community interest in the marital home at $217,716.02 and the Egyptian apartment building at $62,666.12. Because Habashi had failed to pay ordered mortgage and utility bills totaling $41,410, and had withdrawn $10,000 from a joint bank account, the court credited those amounts (including $5,000 to Kamel-Kirollos for her share of the withdrawn funds) toward her share of the property. The court awarded the marital home to Kamel-Kirollos and the Egyptian apartment to Habashi, then equalized each party's share. On custody, the court gave Habashi primary physical custody of the minor son and Kamel-Kirollos primary physical custody of the minor daughter. It found the parties' incomes were substantially similar and that neither would pay child support until the middle child turned 18. It found Habashi owed $10,420.33 in past-due (arrears) child support. It also ordered Habashi to pay a symbolic amount of alimony - $1 per year for ten years - which could be adjusted if it turned out Habashi had hidden income. On appeal, the Court of Appeals agreed with the district court on most points. It upheld the custody decision, the property division, and the alimony award, explaining that an appeals court does not re-weigh evidence or second-guess a trial judge's decisions about who is telling the truth. However, the court found a problem with how the child support arrears were calculated: the district court never made a finding about exactly when the oldest child reached age 18, even though the child had reached adulthood before the second decree, and Habashi's support obligation for that child should have ended at that point. Because it was unclear whether the district court accounted for this, the appeals court reversed the arrears calculation and sent the case back for the district court to make additional findings on that narrow issue.

Irina and Donovan Hansen married in 2007 and have one child. During the marriage Donovan worked as a firefighter (later a battalion chief) for the city of North Las Vegas, while Irina initially worked as a real-estate agent, became a stay-at-home mother, and later obtained a cosmetology license and opened a salon using a home-equity loan. When the marriage broke down, Donovan filed for divorce in 2019. The case went to trial in 2021, where Donovan had a lawyer and Irina represented herself. The trial court divided the couple's property, set child support and alimony, and awarded joint legal custody with Irina having primary physical custody. Irina appealed, arguing the trial court got several financial issues wrong and was biased against her. The Court of Appeals of Nevada rejected each argument and affirmed (upheld) the trial court's decision. On child support, Irina argued the court used inaccurate figures for Donovan's income. The appeals court explained that trial judges decide disputed facts and weigh witness credibility, and appellate courts do not second-guess those calls when they are supported by adequate evidence. Donovan's pay stubs, tax documents, and testimony supported the court's finding that his gross monthly income was $15,376.19, which produced a child support order of $1,445 per month. On alimony, Irina wanted at least $6,000 per month rather than the $3,000 per month for 60 months she received. The appeals court noted trial courts have broad discretion to award alimony that is "just and equitable." The trial court found Irina could earn about $3,000 per month from her cosmetology work and salon, that her reasonable post-divorce expenses were about $5,500, and considered her child support - and concluded $3,000 per month for five years was appropriate. The appeals court found this supported by the evidence. On property division, Irina argued Donovan got an unequal share without proper findings, that she should have kept the marital home, and that Donovan wasted community assets. The appeals court explained that community property is generally split equally, that the trial court found much of Irina's testimony about asset values not credible, that selling the marital home made sense given the mortgage and home-equity loan on it, and that Irina had not proven waste. It also upheld the finding that money in Donovan's deferred compensation account before the marriage ($87,992.62) was his separate property. On the pension issue, Irina wanted to be named the survivor beneficiary on Donovan's PERS (Public Employees' Retirement System) benefits. The appeals court explained that under Nevada law a divorce decree does not have to give a former spouse a survivor beneficiary interest, and the trial court permissibly let Donovan choose his survivor beneficiary at retirement while still splitting the community interest in the pension equally. On attorney fees, Irina argued she should have received an amount matching what Donovan spent. The trial court noted both sides spent substantial sums, that some of Irina's spending reflected her "stated intent to drag this case out for her financial advantage," but that there was a significant income disparity, and awarded her $10,000. The appeals court found no abuse of discretion in declining to award more. Finally, on the bias claim, the appeals court held Irina had not shown the judge relied on information from outside the case or displayed the kind of "deep-seated favoritism or antagonism that would make fair judgment impossible" required to establish bias.

This is a brief procedural order, not a ruling on the underlying child custody dispute between John Olsen and Juniper Olsen. After filing his appeal, John Olsen submitted a notice withdrawing it. The Nevada Supreme Court treated that filing as a request to voluntarily dismiss the appeal and granted the request. As a result, the appeal is over without any decision on its merits, and the lower court's ruling stands. The order does not describe the custody dispute, the trial court's findings, or any legal arguments. It is purely an administrative dismissal triggered by the appellant's own withdrawal.

This is a family-law dispute between two divorced parents over custody of their minor child. After their divorce, the district court issued a temporary order in September 2022 giving the father exclusive custody so that he and the child could reunify. The mother appealed two later orders connected with that temporary arrangement: a November 2022 order that, among other things, refused to pause the temporary custody arrangement, and an August 2023 order dealing with a parenting coordinator's recommendations and canceling a scheduled evidentiary hearing. While the appeals were pending, the Nevada Supreme Court sent the case back to the district court on a "limited remand" so that the district judge could address the still-pending custody motion and the mother's objections to the parenting coordinator's reports. By the time the matter returned to the Supreme Court, the father's exclusive-custody period had ended and the parents had apparently returned to their previously agreed custody schedule. The Supreme Court asked both sides to explain why the appeals should not be dismissed as "moot" - meaning there was nothing left for the court to decide because circumstances had changed. The mother largely conceded mootness but urged the court to keep the first appeal alive because, in her view, it raised important constitutional issues. The father agreed the appeals were moot. The Supreme Court dismissed both appeals. It gave two reasons. First, the appeals were moot: because the exclusive-custody period had ended and the parties had returned to their prior arrangement, the court could not grant any effective relief. Second, the orders being appealed dealt only with temporary custody measures, and Nevada law does not allow appeals from temporary custody orders. Only an order that finally changes custody can be appealed. The court also denied the father's emergency motion to confirm that the district court's December 1, 2023, order was final and effective. That order had only proposed how the district court would rule rather than actually deciding the issues. Because the appeals were being dismissed, the Supreme Court directed its clerk to send the case back ("issue the remittiturs") so the district court could enter a final order resolving the custody motion and the objections to the parenting coordinator's reports. Any order that finally modifies custody can then be appealed.

This is a child-custody dispute between two divorced parents. After their divorce, the district court entered a temporary order in September 2022 giving the father, Richard Young, exclusive custody of their child for "reunification purposes." The mother, Alicia Young (now Hagerman), challenged later orders that flowed from that temporary arrangement - first a November 2022 order that, among other things, refused to pause the temporary custody order, and then an August 2023 order dealing with a parenting coordinator's report. While the appeals were pending, things changed on the ground. The father's period of exclusive custody ended, and the parties appeared to return to the custody schedule they had agreed to before the dispute. Because of that, the Nevada Supreme Court asked the parties to explain why the appeals should not be dismissed as "moot" - meaning there was no longer a live problem the court could fix. The mother largely conceded that the cases were technically moot but argued the first appeal raised important constitutional issues the court should still address. The court declined. It explained that mootness is a question of "justiciability," and Nevada appellate courts decide only actual controversies where they can give meaningful relief. Because the temporary custody arrangement had ended, the court said it could not grant any effective relief. The court added a second, independent reason to dismiss: the orders the mother appealed from were not the kind of orders Nevada law lets a party appeal in the first place. Temporary custody orders, orders denying a stay, and orders that do not finally change custody are generally not appealable. Only a final order modifying custody is appealable under Nevada's appellate rules. The court also addressed a procedural tangle. Earlier, it had sent the case back to the district court on a "limited remand" so the trial judge could rule on the pending motion to modify custody and on objections to the parenting coordinator's reports. Instead of actually deciding those issues, the district court issued an order on December 1, 2023, that only said how it would rule if given full authority - referencing NRCP 62.1, a rule for indicating an inclination to rule. The father asked the Supreme Court to confirm that order was final and effective. The Supreme Court refused, saying the December 1 order did not actually resolve anything. Because the appeals are being dismissed, no additional remand is needed; once the remittiturs (the formal documents returning jurisdiction) issue, the district court can enter a real, final order, and any party unhappy with that final custody decision can appeal it.

This case involves a dispute between two parents, Tyler James Focht and Analiesa Campbell, over custody of their child. Focht had originally filed a complaint to establish that he was the child's father. After the court confirmed his paternity, it ordered the parents to share joint legal and physical custody and set up a schedule for parenting time. Focht later asked the court to change that arrangement so that he would have primary physical custody. He argued that this would be best for the child because, in his view, Campbell had untreated mental health issues that led her to interfere with his parenting time and might cause her to harm the child. Campbell disagreed. She disputed his claims, argued that Focht was a danger to the child, and said his parenting time should be supervised. She also alleged that Focht was under criminal investigation over accusations that he had sexually assaulted her. The district court held an evidentiary hearing at which both parents testified. Afterward, the court issued a written order refusing to change the custody arrangement. The court considered the factors Nevada law requires it to weigh when deciding what is in a child's best interest. It found that Campbell had interfered with Focht's parenting time, that both parents raised concerns about the other's mental health and that both appeared to have some mental health issues, and that there was an open investigation into the sexual-assault allegations against Focht — but that there was not enough evidence to find Focht had committed domestic violence. In the end, the court decided Focht had not shown that custody should be changed and left the joint arrangement in place. Focht appealed. The Court of Appeals explained that it does not re-examine the evidence or second-guess which witnesses a trial judge believed; its job is to check whether the trial court's decision was supported by enough evidence and whether the trial court abused its discretion. A key problem for Focht's appeal was that his arguments depended on what happened at the evidentiary hearing, but he never provided the appeals court with a transcript of that hearing. Although he had requested the transcript and the court reporter reported delivering it, Focht did not file a copy with the appeals court, and the Nevada Supreme Court had even sent him a notice reminding him of that requirement. Because the transcript was missing, the Court of Appeals said it had to assume the transcript would have supported the trial court's decision, and it could not meaningfully review Focht's challenges to findings that were based on the hearing testimony. On that basis, the court concluded Focht had not shown the district court abused its discretion, and it affirmed the denial of his motion.

Kathryn and Brian Mead divorced in 2007 and initially shared joint physical and legal custody of their three children. The opinion describes their relationship as contentious, with frequent litigation over custody and support. After disputes about parenting time, the district court ordered mediation and interviews of the children, then entered a temporary order giving Brian primary physical custody and set a hearing to decide whether custody should be formally changed. Following an evidentiary hearing held over two days in March and April 2022, the court entered another temporary order giving Brian primary physical custody, which Kathryn appealed (Docket No. 84843-COA). After a further hearing in May 2022, the court entered a permanent order giving Brian primary physical custody and requiring Kathryn to pay child support. Kathryn appealed that final order too (Docket No. 84878-COA). The Court of Appeals first addressed which appeal it could actually decide. It concluded that the temporary order challenged in the first appeal did not "finally establish[ ] or alter[] the custody of minor children," so that appeal did not meet the requirement for an appealable order and had to be dismissed. The May 2022 order, by contrast, was a final custody determination the court could review, so the court considered Kathryn's arguments in that second appeal. On the merits, the court explained that a judge can change a physical custody arrangement only after finding two things: that there has been a substantial change in circumstances affecting the child's welfare, and that changing custody serves the child's best interest. The court must also connect the child's best interest to the custody decision by making specific findings about the best interest factors set out in Nevada law. The Court of Appeals found that the district court's order did neither adequately. The order did not address whether there had been a substantial change in circumstances, and it awarded Brian primary custody without discussing the required best interest factors. The court noted the district court's findings simply stated that it had "reviewed the [b]est [i]nterest[ ] considerations under the law" and had considered the youngest child's preference. Reviewing the hearing transcript, the court also found the judge did not make oral findings on all the best interest factors. Because the required legal standard was not applied and the required findings were not made, the court held the district court abused its discretion. The court reversed the custody order and sent the case back so the district court could properly analyze whether custody modification is warranted. Because the child support amount depended on the custody outcome, the court also reversed the support determination and returned it for reconsideration after the custody proceedings. In the meantime, the existing custody arrangement stays in place, subject to change by the district court to fit current circumstances. The court noted that because the two older children are now over 18, the physical custody question is moot as to them, and it limited its custody discussion to the youngest child.

Troy and Monika Askew married in December 2006 and had one child, I.A., born in June 2009. Troy worked as a firefighter and had retirement and deferred compensation accounts; Monika ran a photography business but agreed to stay home with the child after I.A.'s birth. After a March 2020 incident in which Monika slapped Troy and Troy hit her back — with the child present — Monika was arrested and Troy obtained a temporary protective order. The parties later agreed to dissolve that order and shared temporary custody. Monika filed for divorce in March 2020. Several events shaped the case. In September 2020, Troy closed his deferred compensation account, withdrew its $98,672 balance, moved it to a separate account, and wired $65,000 to his mother — he later said $35,000 repaid a loan and $30,000 was for his mother "to hold for him." That same month, the child was hospitalized after expressing suicidal thoughts and told providers her mother had hit her. Monika admitted in the divorce proceedings that she once used a hanger to "swat" the child. Troy then sought another protective order on the child's behalf, but the court did not extend it because the application cited no new violence, only the earlier hanger incident. After a five-day trial, the district court entered a divorce decree in February 2022. On custody, the court found that both parents had committed domestic violence against each other in the March 2020 incident, but that Monika was the "primary physical aggressor," which triggered a legal presumption against giving her joint custody. A "presumption" here is a starting assumption the law makes that a party can overcome with enough evidence. The court examined the statutory "best interest of the child" factors, concluded the presumption had been overcome, and ordered joint physical custody with the child rotating three days at a time between each parent. On money, the court found that Troy's withdrawal from his deferred compensation account was a misappropriation of community funds meant to deprive Monika, which gave a "compelling reason" to divide property unequally. In the end, though, the court divided the community property equally: Monika received about $100,000 more in assets but was ordered to pay Troy roughly $50,010 as an offset to balance things out. The court also awarded Monika alimony of $800 per month for 72 months. The Court of Appeals affirmed on all three issues. On custody, it noted the district court did not separately label the hanger incident as an act of domestic violence against the child (which "was potentially an error"), but concluded any error was harmless because the court still applied the presumption against Monika, considered the hanger incident within its best-interest analysis, found it isolated and remote in time, and found the joint custody arrangement would protect the child. The appellate court also stressed that it does not reweigh evidence on appeal. On the property division, it explained that the court actually divided property equally after the offset, so Troy suffered no unequal treatment; and that although Troy was not formally served with the Joint Preliminary Injunction, he acknowledged and asked to be bound by it, so any lack of service was harmless. On alimony, the court found no abuse of discretion, holding that even if the district court compared Troy's gross income to Monika's net income, any such error was harmless and the required statutory factors were properly considered.

Xochitl and Jerry were married and have two children. After the couple separated in 2016, the children briefly lived with Jerry, then moved to Xochitl's home and had little contact with Jerry afterward. When Xochitl filed for divorce in 2017, the case turned into a custody fight centered on Jerry's claim that Xochitl had turned the children against him - what courts call parental alienation. The case did not go to trial until 2021. At trial, the district court heard extensive testimony from Donna Wilburn, a licensed marriage and family therapist appointed by the court, who had worked on unsuccessful efforts to reunify the children with Jerry. Wilburn's reports blamed the children's alienation on Xochitl, said Xochitl resisted the reunification process, and recommended temporarily removing the children from Xochitl's care. After trial, the district court gave Jerry sole physical custody, set up a plan to gradually transition the children out of Xochitl's care, and ordered that once the transition was complete, Xochitl was to have no contact with the children until her own therapist decided she could recognize and manage the behaviors that led to the alienation. The Nevada Court of Appeals reversed the custody portion of the decree. It did not decide Xochitl's specific arguments about the evidence. Instead, it held that the district court's approach did not follow the requirements the Court of Appeals had recently announced in a case called Roe v. Roe - an opinion that came out after the district court ruled, so neither the trial judge nor Xochitl had its guidance at the time. Under Roe, before a court can give one parent sole physical custody, it must make specific written findings - either that the other parent is unfit or an adequate explanation of why a less drastic arrangement (primary physical custody) would not serve the child's best interest - and then it must order the least restrictive parenting time arrangement consistent with the child's best interest. The appeals court identified problems with the decree. Although the district court did find Xochitl unfit, it made that finding in the wrong analytical place. More significantly, the court ordered Xochitl to have no contact with the child at first, even though Wilburn - the therapist the court relied on - had recommended allowing weekly recorded Facetime calls, a less restrictive option. The district court never acknowledged that its arrangement was more restrictive than the therapist's recommendation or explained why the stricter approach served the child's best interest. In addition, by letting Xochitl's therapist decide when Xochitl had made enough progress to resume supervised parenting time, the court improperly handed its own decision-making power over custody matters to a third party - something judges are not permitted to do. The Court of Appeals reversed the physical custody portion of the decree and sent the case back for further proceedings consistent with Roe. In the meantime, it left the current custody arrangement in place, subject to modification by the district court to fit current circumstances. Jerry did not file a response brief on appeal; the court noted it could have treated that silence as a concession of error but chose instead to decide the case on the defects apparent in the district court's order.

Pamela and Dale Payne divorced in Utah in 2018 and agreed to share both legal and physical custody of their child, A.P., who is now 12. After the family moved to Reno, the Utah divorce order was registered in Nevada in 2019. Over the following years, the parents reached several agreements—modifying the parenting schedule (while keeping shared physical custody) and arranging for A.P. to attend therapy. In 2023, Pamela filed the motion at the center of this appeal, asking the court to give her primary physical custody and to adjust child support. She listed many concerns: that A.P. was fearful of Dale and got stomachaches before spending time with him, that Dale talked to A.P. about the custody dispute and read one of Pamela's court filings to her, that Dale made hurtful comments about Pamela and about A.P.'s weight, that Dale told his male friends A.P. had gotten her period, that Dale did not follow parts of the divorce order, and that Dale blocked A.P. from contacting Pamela during his parenting time. Pamela argued these facts showed Dale was emotionally abusive and that conflict between the parents was high. Dale opposed the motion, saying Pamela was simply repeating allegations she had already raised in a 2021 filing about therapy, and he disputed whether her claims were true. Without holding a hearing, the district court denied Pamela's requests. The judge found many of the allegations were "stale," identical to the 2021 filing, and too broad or conclusory—for example, that Pamela did not provide specific dates for events like when A.P. cried or had stomach issues. The court identified only a few genuinely new allegations but concluded they did not show a substantial change in circumstances. The Court of Appeals disagreed with how the district court handled the motion. Under Nevada law, when a parent asks to change custody, the trial court must generally accept the parent's specific factual allegations as true when deciding whether to hold a hearing. Taking Pamela's allegations as true, the appeals court concluded they could show a substantial change affecting A.P.'s welfare—such as a deteriorating relationship with Dale, coparenting conflict, and concerns about A.P.'s emotional needs. The court also explained that Pamela's earlier 2021 motion was about therapy, not custody, and did not result in a custody decision, so her current allegations were not merely repetitive in the legal sense. The Court of Appeals stressed that it was not deciding whether Pamela's claims are true or whether she should win. It noted Dale's challenges to her allegations "may eventually be proven correct or found more credible." But because no evidence had yet been taken and the court had also refused to let A.P. testify, the appeals court held the district court could not properly deny the motion without an evidentiary hearing. It reversed and sent the case back for further proceedings.

When someone files an appeal with the Nevada Supreme Court, they normally have to pay a filing fee. If they cannot afford it, they can ask the court for permission to proceed without paying by following a specific rule (NRAP 24, which governs in forma pauperis applications - a request to waive fees based on inability to pay). In this case, John Olsen filed an appeal involving a child custody matter but did not pay the filing fee when the appeal was docketed. The court sent him a notice the same day telling him he had seven days to either pay or properly request a fee waiver, and warning that if he did neither, the appeal would be dismissed. He did not respond and did not pay. Because of that, the Nevada Supreme Court dismissed the appeal without reaching any of the substantive issues in the underlying child custody dispute. The order does not address the merits of the custody case.

Ashley and John Franklin married in 2012 and have two children. Ashley filed for divorce in 2019. At trial, the central dispute was whether John had committed domestic violence against Ashley. If so, Nevada law would presume that joint physical custody is not in the children's best interest. Ashley described several incidents, including a 2013 episode that led to a protective order and a 2019 bear-hug she said ruptured a breast implant. John denied domestic violence but admitted he had pleaded down to disturbing the peace as to the 2013 incident. The district court found that Ashley's testimony was not credible enough to meet the "clear and convincing evidence" standard required to trigger the presumption against joint physical custody. The court instead awarded joint physical custody, ordered John to pay $300 per month in alimony for 36 months, divided the parties' assets and debts, and assigned a loan from Ashley's friend Karen Brady (used for living expenses) to the community while assigning a separate loan for Ashley's attorney fees solely to Ashley. After Ashley moved for reconsideration, the court denied it and awarded John $2,500 in attorney fees without explaining why. The Nevada Supreme Court mostly affirmed. It agreed that the district court could permissibly find Ashley's domestic violence allegations did not meet the clear-and-convincing standard, given inconsistencies in her account and missing corroborating evidence (such as medical records of the alleged ruptured implant surgery). The Court agreed the district court should not have excluded a photograph of Ashley's face that she said showed an injury caused by John - her testimony alone was enough to authenticate it - but because the photo was not in the appellate record, the Court could not say its exclusion harmed Ashley, so the error was harmless. The Court agreed that police computer-aided dispatch (CAD) reports were properly excluded as hearsay because no records custodian or qualified person authenticated them. On finances, the Court upheld the trial judge's decisions: prepaid bank accounts John said were empty and unused were properly assigned to him; the attorney-fees loan was properly assigned solely to Ashley because it was incurred after separation and not for the community's benefit; the living-expenses loan was properly assigned to the community (and John waived his contrary argument by not raising it at trial); and the $3,400 equalization payment to Ashley was supported by the record. The Court also upheld the alimony award. The one place the Court reversed was the attorney-fee award against Ashley for filing her motion for reconsideration. The trial court had given no explanation, and losing a motion - by itself - does not show that the motion was frivolous or filed to harass. Justice Bell concurred in most of the order but dissented on the domestic violence question, writing that the district court's own findings of fact - including findings that John forced Ashley into non-consensual sex, punched a hole in the wall, and coerced her into dropping charges - already amounted to clear and convincing evidence of domestic violence, and that the district court applied too high a standard when it declined to trigger the statutory presumption against joint physical custody.

Monica and Jeffrey Toliver divorced in 2018 and share two children, born in 2009 and 2012. Under a 2019 agreement, they split both legal custody (the authority to make major decisions for the children, such as those involving health, education, and religion) and physical custody (where the children live) equally, on a week-on-week-off schedule. In December 2021, Jeffrey asked the court to give him primary physical custody. He said the older child preferred to live with him and had reported fears and concerns about living at Monica's home, including emotional abuse and name-calling, losing her room when Monica's boyfriend and his children moved in, a long daily drive to school, and a delay of months before Monica approved therapy the child wanted. Before the main hearing, Jeffrey filed an emergency motion and attached a letter from Brian Crane, a licensed clinical social worker who had begun treating the older child, describing the child's "severe levels of depression" and her concerns about the living situation. The court temporarily gave Jeffrey primary physical custody. The court then held a two-day evidentiary hearing (a hearing where witnesses testify and evidence is presented). Jeffrey's witnesses were the older child, whom the judge interviewed privately, and three social workers who had served as the children's therapists. Monica testified and called her boyfriend and his daughter. Crane testified that the child's depression worsened when she was with Monica, and that he could not finish his evaluation because Monica filed a police report and a report to a licensing board against him, which ended his treatment of the child. After the hearing, the district court gave Jeffrey primary physical custody, with Monica having parenting time on Sundays. The court also made a narrow change to legal custody: it gave Jeffrey the primary say only on the children's mental-health decisions, while leaving Monica involved in all other health, education, and religious decisions. The court found the children needed further counseling, that Monica had interfered with their mental-health treatment, and that Monica's witnesses were less credible. On appeal, Monica first argued that the court unfairly changed legal custody because Jeffrey had only asked to change physical custody, so she lacked notice. The Court of Appeals noted she had not provided the full transcripts of the hearing, so it presumed the missing record supported the trial court. Beyond that, it explained that the change to legal custody was narrow — it did not remove Monica from decision-making the way a sole custody order would — and that she had notice custody and the children's mental health would be central issues, attended the hearing with a lawyer, and could confront the witnesses. The court found no due process violation. Monica next argued that the court wrongly treated Crane's letter as a formal custody evaluation and wrongly found she committed domestic violence. The Court of Appeals rejected the custody-evaluation argument, noting that no one had asked for and the court had not ordered a custody evaluation, and that Crane himself said his letter was just an incomplete progress report he prepared for a settlement conference. On the domestic violence point, the Court of Appeals agreed the district court made mistakes: it found three instances of domestic violence without describing them, did not address whether some had already been litigated, and did not properly apply the legal standard for the presumption against joint physical custody. But the court held these errors were harmless — meaning they did not change the outcome — because the district court had relied on several other best-interest factors, none of which favored Monica, and Monica did not challenge those other findings on appeal. The Court of Appeals therefore affirmed both the physical- and legal-custody rulings.

Brian Anderson and Sarah Byrd are the parents of a child, D.A., born in 2009. Anderson lives in Elko, Nevada, and originally had primary physical custody (meaning the child lived with him most of the time), while Byrd, who lives in Salem, Oregon, had parenting time during certain holidays and school breaks. In December 2020, while the child was staying with Byrd, the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services told Byrd that the child's half-sister had reported to a school counselor that Anderson had been abusing the children and drinking alcohol to excess. In January 2021, when Anderson drove to Oregon to pick up the child under the existing custody order, Byrd refused to let the child go. Anderson filed a motion asking the court to order Byrd to explain herself (an order to show cause), which the court granted. Byrd then filed a motion to change the custody order, and Anderson opposed it. The trial court held a two-day evidentiary hearing in October 2022. At the start, Anderson raised an objection because he knew the judge from high school more than twenty years earlier. The judge said there had been no contact between them since high school and that she held no ill will toward him. Anderson said he believed the judge and was ready to proceed. The court heard testimony from several witnesses, including Anderson, Byrd, and two of Anderson's ex-girlfriends. Byrd testified that Anderson would not tell her about the child's medical and dental appointments or school meetings, and described an incident where Anderson forcibly dragged the child down a driveway. Anderson denied dragging the child but admitted he "pushed [D.A.] in the truck," that he did not tell Byrd about an injury the child suffered at football practice, that he used a sledgehammer to destroy a phone Byrd had bought for the child, and that he struck the child with a belt. One ex-girlfriend, Heidi Harter, testified about Anderson's drinking during their relationship. After the hearing, the court granted Byrd's request to change custody. It found that Anderson had "demonstrated an absolute inability to co-parent" and that this amounted to a substantial change in circumstances affecting the child's welfare. The court then examined the factors Nevada law requires for deciding a child's best interest and concluded that the child's best interest would be served by giving Byrd primary physical custody, with Anderson getting parenting time on certain holidays and school breaks. The Court of Appeals affirmed. It explained that custody decisions are reviewed for "abuse of discretion" - meaning the appeals court will not overturn the decision unless it was unsupported by the evidence or clearly wrong - and that appellate judges do not re-weigh the evidence or second-guess which witnesses the trial judge believed. The court found the "inability to co-parent" finding was supported by the evidence, and noted that even if that finding were wrong, it would not matter because Anderson himself conceded that a substantial change in circumstances existed. On the custody award, the court noted that the trial judge had considered all the required best-interest factors, found that several favored Byrd, and that Anderson did not challenge those findings other than pointing to Byrd's act of withholding the child in 2020 - which the trial court had already counted in Anderson's favor. On the alcohol testimony, the court held that the ex-girlfriend gave a permissible lay opinion based on her own observations, not a medical diagnosis, and that the custody order did not even rely on Anderson's alcohol use. On recusal, the court held that Anderson never actually asked the judge to step aside, that his argument was arguably waived, and that simply having attended school together more than twenty years earlier did not show the kind of bias that would require the judge to recuse herself.

Natalie and Doug Gennardo married in 2002 and had three children. Doug filed for divorce in May 2019. After Doug moved out in December 2019, the parents tried to share custody, but there was significant conflict. According to the opinion, Natalie struggled with extreme alcohol abuse and sometimes exhibited violent behavior. After a confrontation between the parents in April 2020, Doug asked the court for primary physical custody. Natalie agreed to attend a 30-day treatment program in Arizona. While she was away, the court put a temporary arrangement in place giving Doug primary physical custody and leaving contact between Natalie and the children at Doug's discretion. A therapist was enlisted to try to repair Natalie's relationship with the children, which had seriously deteriorated. The children reported not wanting to see her. For roughly a year, Natalie could see the children only under the therapist's supervision or when Doug allowed it, and the court did not set a parenting-time schedule or hold a hearing on the temporary arrangement during that time. Because the case had complicated financial issues that delayed the trial, the court eventually decided in February 2021 to resolve custody before the trial on money matters. It held three custody hearings in April and May 2021, heard testimony, and awarded the parents joint legal custody with primary physical custody to Doug. It made findings on each of the statutory factors that guide a child's best interest. Separately, Doug's employer, Marriott, cut his pay early in the pandemic and told him in June 2021 that his Las Vegas position would be eliminated. In July, Marriott offered him a comparable job in Texas. Doug accepted and asked the court to let the children move with him. In August 2021, the court allowed a temporary move ahead of a promised hearing meant to permanently decide the relocation issue. That hearing was never held. Instead, after the trial on the financial matters, the court entered a final decree making the relocation permanent. Natalie asked the court to reconsider because the promised hearing never happened; the court denied her request. On appeal, the Court of Appeals reached different conclusions on the different issues. On custody, the court said the trial judge did not strictly follow Nevada's process favoring joint physical custody and may have shifted the burden of proof onto Natalie, which was an error. But the court concluded the custody decision was still supported by substantial evidence and adequately explained, so it did not reverse the custody award. The court also found that the trial judge had improperly created what amounted to a de facto sole physical custody arrangement — giving Doug complete control over Natalie's time with the children and refusing to set a schedule or a hearing for about a year — and then gave too much weight to that one year while disregarding Natalie's 16 years as the children's primary caretaker. The court called this clearly erroneous but concluded it did not change the custody result because Natalie did not show a different outcome was reasonably likely without the error. On the temporary relocation, the court held the trial judge acted within its discretion in allowing the children to move temporarily before a hearing, given the exigent circumstances of Doug being the family's sole provider and needing to start a job in another state. On the permanent relocation, however, the court held that the trial judge abused its discretion by making it permanent without ever holding the evidentiary hearing it had repeatedly promised. Because no actual evidence was taken, the court's relocation "findings" rested only on lawyers' arguments and motion exhibits, which the appellate court found insufficient. The court further held that this deprived Natalie of her constitutionally protected due process rights, because she was never given the opportunity to challenge Doug's claims and present her own evidence. The Court of Appeals affirmed the custody decision, reversed the permanent relocation, and sent the case back for a prompt hearing on relocation. It noted the temporary relocation order may remain in effect while that hearing is pending.

Eli Pederson and Krystina Jeter have two minor children. In 2017, Krystina began custody proceedings alleging that Eli violently attacked and assaulted her in front of the children. In September 2018, the district court awarded Krystina sole physical and legal custody, based on its analysis of the children's best interests and findings that Eli had been convicted - through a guilty plea - of attempted sexual assault against Krystina and child abuse or neglect against the children. Eli, who is incarcerated at Lovelock Correctional Center, did not appeal that 2018 order. In 2022, Eli filed a "Petition for an Order to Establish a Correspondence with Minor Children," saying he had not been allowed contact with the children since his incarceration and wanted to begin repairing the relationship through phone calls, gifts, and letters. He stated that he had completed parenting classes in prison and had grown physically, spiritually, and mentally. Krystina opposed, arguing that Eli had not shown enough of a change in circumstances to justify modifying custody, and pointing to the children's therapist and a recent psychological report indicating the children were still having problems with their father's actions. Instead of filing a reply brief, Eli submitted the matter for decision. The district court denied his motion, finding he had not set forth a sufficient basis to modify the prior custody order and had not shown that an evidentiary hearing - a court proceeding where witnesses testify and evidence is presented - was necessary. Eli then sought reconsideration, arguing among other things that ruling without giving him a chance to reply violated his due process rights, and asking the court to force the children's therapist to produce treatment records. The district court denied that motion too. On appeal, the Court of Appeals explained that when a parent asks to change a custody arrangement, the burden is on the parent making the request - not the other parent - to show a preliminary (prima facie) case for modification. Eli's argument that Krystina had also failed to make such a showing therefore missed the mark, and because he did not otherwise address the district court's conclusion that no evidentiary hearing was warranted, the court declined to consider that issue further. The court also noted that Eli's arguments did not address the district court's central finding: that there was insufficient evidence a modification would serve the children's best interest. His contention that his convictions had nothing to do with his biological children was, in the court's words, belied by the record and conflicted with express findings in the 2018 custody decree - which he never appealed and therefore could no longer challenge. As for the reconsideration motion, the court found no due process problem: under the local rule (WDGCR 12(4)), filing a reply brief is optional, and Eli chose to submit the matter for decision without one. Because Eli did not challenge the district court's stated reasons for denying reconsideration - that he failed to establish a legal basis for it and improperly raised new claims for the first time in that motion - the court deemed those challenges waived. The Court of Appeals affirmed both denials.

Robert Haer and Carol Reyes were never married but share one child. In September 2020, Reyes filed a complaint asking a court to decide custody. Haer initially disputed that he was the father, and the court sealed the case to protect the child's privacy under a statute (NRS 126.211). DNA testing later confirmed Haer was the child's father. In May 2021, the court entered a temporary order. It adopted a parenting plan the parties agreed on and set temporary child support at $440 per month, based on Haer's reported monthly income of $2,749. Haer was also directed to pay an extra $100 per month toward $2,580 in back support (arrearages) dating from October 2020. The court made clear this support amount was temporary and would remain in place only until Haer's actual income could be verified. At trial, the parties agreed to admit several of Haer's financial records. Haer testified about his income, but the court found his testimony about how much he earned - and how much he was able to earn - was not believable. Looking at his bank records, tax documents, and other information, the court concluded that Haer was capable of earning much more than he claimed. The court decided he was "willfully underemployed" and treated him as if he earned $7,006 per month (this is called imputing income). Using that figure, the court set his monthly child support at $1,100. Because Haer's inaccurate financial disclosures had caused the earlier temporary support amount to be set too low, the court also had Reyes submit a schedule of what was actually owed. The court ultimately found Haer was $9,240 in arrears and ordered him to pay $100 per month toward that. The court also awarded Reyes $1,500 in attorney fees. Haer appealed. He raised three main points. First, he argued the court was wrong to impute extra income to him, saying it used outdated information, that his roofing business had declined, and that it ignored his poor health, criminal history, and inability to read or write. The appeals court disagreed. It explained that judges review these decisions for "abuse of discretion" and do not re-weigh a witness's credibility. The record showed the trial court actually did consider Haer's health, criminal record, and literacy, but concluded his own financial records showed he had earned substantial income and that his testimony conflicted with the documents. The appeals court also noted that Haer never provided a trial transcript, so it presumed the missing transcript supported the trial court's decision. Second, Haer argued the court had no power to change the support amount from what the temporary order set. The appeals court rejected this. As for the ongoing support in the final decree, no retroactive change was involved because those payments had not yet come due. As for the arrearages based on revised temporary payments, the temporary order itself said the amount was "without prejudice pending verification of [f]ather's income," so both sides were on notice the amount could change. Once trial revealed Haer's disclosure form was inaccurate, adjusting the amounts was permissible. Third, Haer challenged the attorney fees. Here the appeals court agreed with him in part. The trial court said it awarded fees under NRS 18.010 but did not specify which subsection, and did not make the required findings. It also failed to cite or apply a required consideration - the difference in income between the two parties. Because of this lack of clarity, the appeals court reversed the fee award and sent that issue back to the trial court to make proper findings. Everything else was affirmed.

Conrad and Heidi Roberson divorced after Heidi filed in 2018. They have two children, G.R. (born 2006) and J.R. (born 2010). Their case went to trial in 2021, but on the fourth day of trial they reached what they called a "full and final" settlement and read the terms into the record. Part of the deal was that Heidi would move to Arizona with the children, and they agreed this relocation was in the children's best interest. The parties agreed that Heidi's attorney would write the proposed divorce decree, Conrad's attorney would suggest edits, and the judge would settle any disagreements. Early in the settlement hearing, Conrad's attorney had said relocation was agreed "so long as the children are okay with it," but later in the same hearing both parties agreed—without any such condition—that Heidi would move to Arizona with the children. The court entered the divorce decree in October 2021. Conrad did not appeal it or object at the time. Just days before Heidi's planned December 2021 move, Conrad filed motions arguing that the children's consent to relocation was a required condition (a "condition precedent") that had been left out of the decree, and that the older child, G.R., did not want to move. Heidi moved to Arizona with the younger child, J.R., but G.R. refused to get into the car. The parties agreed G.R. could finish the school year in Nevada. Later disputes led the district court to grant Heidi's emergency motion, and G.R. was sent to live with her in Arizona. The district court denied Conrad's motions. It found the decree did not leave out any essential term, that it did not have to analyze the "best interest" factors because the parties had stipulated their agreement was in the children's best interest, and that Conrad had not made a preliminary ("prima facie") case that circumstances had changed enough to justify modifying custody of G.R. On appeal, the Court of Appeals reached two different results. First, it agreed with the district court that the children's consent was never actually part of the parties' agreement. The court noted Conrad relied on a single sentence taken out of context and that Conrad himself never proposed adding a consent-condition to the decree while the parties were exchanging drafts—the only real dispute was over the timing of the move. So the court affirmed the refusal to change the decree. Second, the court disagreed with how the district court handled the request to modify custody of G.R. Conrad had alleged that G.R., then 15, refused to relocate and wanted to stay in Nevada through high school, and he supported those allegations with a declaration. Under the governing standard, a court must accept such specific allegations as true when deciding whether to hold an evidentiary hearing. The court concluded these allegations, if proven, could show a substantial change in circumstances, and that the district court should have held an evidentiary hearing and considered G.R.'s wishes (G.R. was available to testify). The court stressed it was expressing no opinion on whether Conrad should ultimately win—only that a hearing was required first. It left the current custody arrangement in place pending further proceedings.

Erika and Michael Kragen have three minor children. The family lived in California before moving to Nevada in early August 2022. By January 31, 2023, Erika had moved back to California with the children while Michael stayed in Nevada. Michael then filed for divorce in Nevada; two days later, Erika filed for legal separation and a domestic violence restraining order in California. Both sought custody, which raised the question of which state's courts had the power to decide custody. That question turns on a law called the UCCJEA (the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, which Nevada has adopted). Under that framework, the children's "home state" - generally, the state where the children lived for at least six consecutive months before the case started - has first priority to decide custody. Here, the exact date the family moved to Nevada mattered enormously: if they arrived on August 1, 2022, the children may have lived in Nevada for the required six months; if they arrived on August 3 or 4, they did not. The parties' paperwork conflicted. Michael's filings and a U-Haul receipt suggested an August 1 move; Erika's filings, a different U-Haul receipt, text messages, and a bank statement suggested the family left California on the night of August 3 and arrived in Nevada on August 4. Erika had originally filed a declaration in the California case stating the move date as August 1, but she later amended it to say August 3. The Nevada district court found that the family had lived in Nevada from August 2022 through January 2023 - six months - and concluded it had home state jurisdiction. It based that decision on the parties' declarations, treating Erika's original California declaration (with the August 1 date) as binding. Before determining jurisdiction, the court had also issued a temporary custody order giving both parents joint legal and physical custody on a week-on/week-off schedule - even though a California court had already entered a restraining order temporarily giving Erika sole legal and joint physical custody and limiting Michael to supervised visits. The Nevada court did not take testimony and said it would not consider Erika's domestic violence allegations until trial. The Court of Appeals granted Erika's petition for a writ of mandamus - a court order compelling a lower court to do something it is required to do. The appellate court held that Erika's original California declaration was not a binding "judicial admission" because it was filed in a different case and was later amended; it could be considered as evidence, but it was not conclusive on the disputed move date. Because the evidence about the move date conflicted, the district court was required to hold an evidentiary hearing - a proceeding where witnesses testify and evidence is formally presented - before deciding whether it had jurisdiction. The appellate court also held that the district court lacked authority to issue a temporary custody order before determining it had jurisdiction, and that granting joint custody without any findings on the children's best interest, despite Erika's domestic violence allegations, "was a manifest abuse of discretion." The district court must now vacate its jurisdictional orders, hold an evidentiary hearing, and - if it finds it has jurisdiction - reconsider temporary custody in light of any supported domestic violence allegations.

This case involves an appeal from a Clark County family court order placing two minor children in protective custody under Nevada's child welfare statutes (NRS Chapter 432B). Three appellants - Gregory C., Misha H., and Zachary B. - tried to challenge that order by filing a direct appeal with the Nevada Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did not reach the merits of whether the protective custody order was appropriate. Instead, the court concluded it had no authority (no "jurisdiction") to hear the appeal at all. Under Nevada's appellate rules, orders that come out of juvenile court and concern child custody cannot be challenged by a regular appeal. On top of that, temporary orders in NRS 432B cases are not considered "final" - and only final orders are generally appealable. The court explained that a party who wants to challenge this kind of order must instead file a "writ petition" - a separate type of request asking a higher court to order the lower court to act, rather than a standard appeal. Because the appellants filed the wrong type of challenge, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal without deciding anything about the underlying custody dispute.

Two parents who were never married had a child together. The father filed a case asking a Nevada district court to give both parents shared custody and to sort out child support and some disputed property. Around the same time, the mother obtained a temporary protection order (a court order meant to protect someone from domestic violence) against the father in a separate court, based on allegations of domestic violence. That protection-order case was moved to the district court and combined with the custody case. After a two-day hearing, the district court found the mother had not proven an act or threat of domestic violence and denied her request to extend the protection order, though it said she could still try to prove domestic violence at the custody trial. The mother then filed her own claims asking for sole custody and permission to move to Oklahoma with the child. She also asked the court to give her temporary primary custody so she could relocate. The court declined to decide that before trial. The court also decided it did not have the authority ("subject matter jurisdiction") to handle the parties' property disputes in this case, so it set those aside. After a one-day trial, the district court issued a decree awarding the parents joint legal and physical custody, set the father's child support obligation, ruled the mother was not entitled to back child support ("arrears"), and directed that the parents alternate claiming the child dependency tax exemption year by year, starting with the father in 2022. The court did not resolve the property disputes. The mother appealed. The Court of Appeals upheld most of the district court's decisions but reversed one part. On custody, the appeals court explained that it reviews custody decisions for "abuse of discretion" - meaning it will not second-guess the trial judge as long as the judge used the right legal reasons and had enough evidence. The court said the trial judge wrote a detailed 17-page order analyzing the legally required "best interest of the child" factors and that the mother's real complaint was that the judge weighed the conflicting evidence against her. An appeals court does not reweigh evidence or reassess who was more believable, so the custody award stood. The appeals court noted the trial judge made a couple of minor factual mistakes (calling the child's half-brother a stepbrother and misdescribing a prior protection order) but concluded those errors did not change the outcome. The court also rejected the mother's other custody-related arguments: that certain testimony was wrongly admitted or excluded and that last-minute scheduling changes hurt her (she did not adequately explain these points); that the judge was biased against her gender and ethnicity (she did not meet the legal standard for showing bias); and that the judge failed to consider her request to move to Oklahoma (the court effectively denied that request by ordering joint custody, and she did not present relevant evidence about the move at trial). The court also addressed and rejected her suggestion that a federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, required the court to grant her relocation request, explaining that the law's definition of "child custody proceeding" does not cover a custody dispute like this one. On child support, the appeals court upheld the amount, finding the father's testimony and financial disclosure form supporting a roughly $7,001 monthly income were adequate, and that the downward adjustment for his payment of the child's health insurance was authorized. On back child support, the court noted the trial judge denied it for two independent reasons, and because the mother challenged only one of them, the ruling stood. On the dependency tax exemption, the court explained that although federal law generally gives the tax benefit to the parent who has the child more of the year, it allows that parent to waive it so the other parent can claim it, and Nevada courts have broad discretion to allocate it between parents sharing joint custody. The appeals court affirmed the alternating allocation starting with the father in 2022 but directed the trial court to require the parties to sign the necessary IRS waiver paperwork on remand. The one thing the appeals court reversed was the property dispute ruling. It held that the district court was wrong to conclude it lacked jurisdiction over the parties' property disputes. The Ninth Judicial District Court is a court of general jurisdiction, and district judges have authority to hear property matters even between unmarried parties. The case was sent back for the district court to actually decide the property disputes - and, because the denial of back child support was tied partly to a finding that the mother took $45,000 from a joint account, the trial court must clarify that on remand as part of resolving the property claims.

Edgar and Maria married in 2014 and have two young children. In September 2020, the couple had an altercation during which, according to the opinion, an intoxicated Edgar accused Maria of infidelity, called her derogatory names, and hit her arm while she held both children. Maria called the police, Edgar was arrested for battery related to domestic violence (though no formal charges were filed), and Maria obtained a temporary protection order (a TPO, which is a court order intended to protect a person from further harm) that was extended several times. Edgar then filed for divorce and asked for joint physical custody (an arrangement where both parents share significant time with the children). In January 2021, the district court entered a temporary order giving Edgar parenting time on weekends and requiring him to pay $415 per month in child support, based on the income he reported at the time. After a trial spread over four days between October 2021 and February 2022, the district court issued a 58-page divorce decree. The court gave Maria primary physical custody, subject to Edgar's weekend parenting time on three weekends per month. In doing so, the court applied a legal presumption in Nevada law that weighs against joint physical custody when a parent has committed domestic violence. The court found that Maria proved, by clear and convincing evidence (a high standard of proof), that Edgar committed multiple acts of domestic violence, including pushing, hitting, slapping, grabbing her by the neck, and sexual assault on at least one occasion. The court also gave Maria the child tax credit, found that Edgar had been dishonest about his income when the earlier $415 support figure was set, raised his ongoing child support to $1,118 per month, and declined to make Maria repay Edgar half of the COVID-19 stimulus money she had received. On appeal, Edgar argued the custody ruling lacked adequate evidentiary support, that joint custody was appropriate, that Maria failed to prove domestic violence, that the temporary support amount was wrong, that the income assigned to Maria was too low, that the tax credit should have been split, that he should have gotten half the stimulus money, and that the judge was biased. The Court of Appeals rejected all of these arguments. A recurring reason was that Edgar did not file the trial transcripts with the appellate court, even though he had requested them. Under Nevada law, when the person appealing fails to provide necessary parts of the record, the appellate court assumes the missing material supports the lower court's decision. The court also found that some of Edgar's arguments were either raised too late (never presented to the trial court) or not supported by developed reasoning. On the bias claim, the court explained that disagreeing with a judge's conclusions is not enough; a party must show bias rooted in something outside the case or a deep-seated hostility making a fair decision impossible, which Edgar did not do. The court affirmed the divorce decree in full.

This case involves a custody dispute between two parents, Joshua Lee Perry and Nae-Ryung Lee, over their young child. The couple married and lived in San Diego, California, where their child was born in March 2019. In October 2021, the family took what began as a six-month vacation to South Korea, Nae-Ryung's home country. That trip was extended by two more months. In June 2022, Joshua and the child returned to the United States while Nae-Ryung stayed in South Korea. Joshua and the child then moved to Las Vegas to live with the child's paternal grandmother, and Nae-Ryung joined them there in August 2022. After living with the family in Las Vegas for several months, Nae-Ryung alleged that Joshua had "kidnapped" the child, claiming the parties had agreed to return to South Korea. In October 2022, she filed for divorce in Las Vegas and asked for primary physical custody, permission to relocate with the child, and an order preventing Joshua from taking the child out of state. Both parents asked the Nevada court to take jurisdiction over the custody question, although Nae-Ryung also argued the child had no home state. The district court issued temporary custody orders, asked both sides to submit written arguments about jurisdiction, and held a hearing. It then decided that Nevada was not the child's "home state" - a legal term describing where a child has lived for a set period before a case begins - and dismissed the entire custody portion of the divorce case. Importantly, the court stopped there and did not consider whether Nevada might still have jurisdiction for other reasons allowed by law. The Court of Appeals reversed. It explained that Nevada law lists several different grounds under which a court can take jurisdiction over a custody case, not just the "home state" rule. Because the district court looked only at the home-state ground and never analyzed the other possible grounds, the appeals court concluded the dismissal was premature. The court sent the case back so the district court can properly examine whether any of the other jurisdictional grounds apply. The appeals court also instructed that, if there is a custody case pending in South Korea, the district court must take that into account when analyzing jurisdiction on remand.

Jamie Armstrong and Duane Ball were never married but have one child together, N.B., born in June 2019. In October 2021, Duane filed a petition asking the court to establish custody, requesting sole legal and physical custody. Jamie had a lawyer during much of the case, but her attorney withdrew in April 2022, after which Jamie represented herself. A dispute arose over whether Jamie was properly told when the trial would take place. In July, Duane's lawyer filed an "application for trial setting"—a document requesting a date for trial—stating that trial would begin September 26. But according to the court, that filing had no certificate of service (proof it was delivered to Jamie), and it did not show that the district court had officially approved and endorsed that date. Jamie said repeatedly at trial that she only learned about the September 26 trial date a few days beforehand. The district court noted that the trial had been set for months but did not make any findings about whether Jamie had actually received timely notice, and it let the trial go forward. Because of the short notice, Jamie said she could not submit her exhibits on time, and only some were admitted. She also tried to bring witnesses on the second day of trial, but the court refused to allow them because she had not disclosed them in advance. After the two-day trial, the court entered an order giving the parties joint legal custody and Duane primary physical custody. The court found that Jamie had removed and concealed N.B. from Duane between late September and early November 2021. It concluded that this triggered a legal presumption under Nevada law (NRS 125C.0035(7))—a rule that assumes it is not in a child's best interest to give custody or unsupervised time to a parent who has committed "any act of abduction against the child." Interestingly, the court found that the presumption against Jamie having unsupervised parenting time had been overcome (rebutted), partly because Duane himself had asked that Jamie get unsupervised time. But the court still applied the presumption against Jamie when it came to physical custody, and it set up a schedule of supervised parenting time that could increase over time with clean drug tests. On appeal, the Court of Appeals concluded the district court did not properly apply the abduction presumption because it did not make the required findings to invoke the presumption by clear and convincing evidence, and it applied the presumption to the physical custody decision without the necessary findings—even after finding the presumption had been rebutted regarding parenting time. The court also concluded that Jamie's lack of notice of the official trial date likely made the problem worse and affected her constitutional right to fair procedures (due process), because she had only a few days to prepare, represented herself, and could not call her witnesses. For these reasons, the court reversed and sent the case back for new proceedings that give both sides adequate time to prepare.

This case involves a child custody dispute between Lou Matthew Lipata and Jocelin Sandra Razo. After the trial court issued its judgment, the trial court entered an order moving the case to a different county - what lawyers call a "change of venue." Mr. Lipata, representing himself without an attorney, tried to appeal that order to the Nevada Supreme Court. The Supreme Court did not decide whether the change of venue was right or wrong. Instead, it dismissed the appeal because of a threshold problem: the court can only hear appeals that a Nevada statute or court rule specifically allows. The Supreme Court concluded that no statute or court rule allows an appeal from a post-judgment order granting a motion to change venue, so it had no power - no "jurisdiction" - to consider the appeal at all. Because the appeal was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, the court also declined to act on Mr. Lipata's September 22, 2023, request for transcripts.