Nevada Child Support Arrears: Interest, Penalties and How a Judgment Schedule Is Built

Each installment is a judgment on its due date

NRS 125B.140(1)(a) provides that if a court order provides for payment for the support of a child, the order is a judgment by operation of law on or after the date a payment is due. Such a judgment may not be retroactively modified or adjusted and may be enforced in the same manner as other judgments of this State. These rules govern Nevada orders; for an order issued by another state's court, NRS 125B.012 and NRS Chapter 130 (the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act) control to the extent they differ.

Two consequences matter in practice. First, nobody has to go back to court to 'get a judgment' for missed support; each missed installment already is one. Second, once an installment has come due, no later motion can reduce it. Only installments that have not yet accrued when a party gives notice of a motion to modify can be changed (NRS 125B.140(1)(b)). The companion explainer at /resources/modifying-and-enforcing-a-nevada-child-support-order covers modification in detail.

The duty to pay does not end when the child is emancipated. A parent who is delinquent at the time the child becomes emancipated must continue making the payments as previously ordered until the arrearages are paid (NRS 125B.100).

Interest: the NRS 99.040 rate and how it resets

When a court adjudicates the amount of arrears, it must determine and include in its order interest upon the arrearages at a rate established pursuant to NRS 99.040, from the time each amount became due, together with a reasonable attorney's fee for the proceeding, unless the court finds that the responsible parent would experience an undue hardship if required to pay those amounts. Interest continues to accrue on the amount ordered until it is paid (NRS 125B.140(2)(c)).

NRS 99.040(1) sets the rate as the prime rate at the largest bank in Nevada, as ascertained by the Commissioner of Financial Institutions, on the January 1 or July 1 immediately preceding 'the date of the transaction', plus 2 percent, and the rate must then be adjusted on each January 1 and July 1 thereafter until the judgment is satisfied. NRS 99.040 itself speaks to contracts, accounts and unpaid wages; child support reaches it through NRS 125B.140(2)(c), which borrows the NRS 99.040 rate and supplies the start point: the date each installment became due. The same prime-plus-2% formula governs interest on Nevada judgments generally under NRS 17.130(2).

In other words, the rate is not fixed for the life of the debt. It is prime plus 2%, re-read twice a year. The Financial Institutions Division publishes the prime rate history used for this purpose (linked in the sources). A correct interest computation therefore breaks each installment's accrual period at every January 1 and July 1 boundary and applies the rate in force during each half-year window.

Simple interest, not compound

Nevada statutory interest is simple interest. In Torres v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 130 Nev. 22 (2014), a judgment-interest case, the Nevada Supreme Court held that a judgment bears simple interest unless a statute or the parties' agreement provides for compounding. The semiannual reset under NRS 99.040 and NRS 17.130 changes only the rate; the rate is always applied to the principal amount, never to accumulated interest.

For an arrears schedule that means interest on each unpaid installment is computed as principal multiplied by the applicable annual rate multiplied by the fraction of the year in each half-year window, and the windows are added together. Accrued interest is tracked in a separate column and is never folded back into the base on which the next period's interest is figured.

The statutes do not fix a day-count convention (for example, actual days divided by 365 versus actual days divided by the actual length of the year). Any schedule presented to a court should state the convention it uses so the other side and the court can check the arithmetic.

How payments are applied

When an obligor makes a payment without designating which installment it is for, Nevada applies the payment to the oldest portion of the debt first. Foster v. Marshman, 96 Nev. 475 (1980), applied that rule to child support arrears, following the general rule stated in Biel v. Godwin, 69 Nev. 189 (1952). Foster also recognized an exception: payments made under or for a specific order or period are credited against the amounts accruing for that same period.

Oldest-first application matters because the oldest installments carry the most accrued interest. Applying a payment to a recent installment instead would leave older principal outstanding and accruing, and would produce a materially different balance over time.

Nevada has no statute and, so far as our review of the published decisions shows, no published opinion that expressly dictates whether a partial payment retires accrued interest or principal first on support arrears. The arrears tool defaults to applying payments to principal first, which is consistent with the simple-interest rule (interest never becomes principal), and offers an interest-first alternative as a disclosed option. Any schedule filed with the court should state which convention it uses.

The 10% penalty under former NRS 125B.095 and its 2020 cutoff

Until February 1, 2020, Nevada law imposed a penalty on delinquent child support in addition to interest. Former NRS 125B.095 provided that once an installment became delinquent in the amount owed for one month's support, a penalty of 10 percent per annum, or portion thereof, was added by operation of the statute to the amount of the installment for as long as it remained unpaid, unless the court found that the obligor's employer or the district attorney or other public enforcing agency caused the payment to be delinquent. The penalty was figured on the amount of the installment and was a separate charge from NRS 99.040 interest, running under its own rules.

Assembly Bill 278 (2017), section 13, repealed NRS 125B.070, 125B.085 and 125B.095, and section 14 made the repeal effective on the date the new NAC 425 guidelines took effect, which was February 1, 2020. NRS 125B.095 no longer appears in the current chapter text. The state enforcement agency's published position (Division of Welfare and Supportive Services, Child Support Enforcement Manual) is that penalties which accrued on installments before February 1, 2020 remain due and enforceable, while no penalty accrues on any installment for any period on or after that date, even where an older order recites the penalty; no Nevada appellate decision in our review addresses the point.

For installments that were delinquent before the cutoff, the arrears schedule therefore carries a penalty column that stops accruing on February 1, 2020 while the interest column continues. The precise method for the 'or portion thereof' language on partial years was never resolved by a Nevada appellate court; in Vaile v. Porsboll, 128 Nev. 27 (2012), the Supreme Court applied the statute but expressly declined to decide how the penalty is calculated. The arrears tool computes the penalty under both defensible readings (a continuous pro-rata accrual, and a full 10% step for each year or part of a year) and reports both so the choice can be argued rather than hidden.

No time limit on enforcement

Nevada removes the statute of limitations from child support judgments. Under NRS 125B.050(2), a motion for relief after judgment and an independent action to enforce a judgment for support of a child may be commenced at any time. Under NRS 125B.050(3), if a court has issued an order for the support of a child, there is no limitation on the time in which an action may be commenced to collect arrearages in the amount of that support or to seek reimbursement of money paid as public assistance for the child.

Where there is no court order at all, NRS 125B.050(1) provides that a written demand for support mailed to the last known address of the parent without physical custody tolls the statute of limitations for bringing an action for that support.

The absence of a deadline means arrears schedules routinely reach back a decade or more. That makes the interest mechanics above, and the penalty cutoff, the parts of the computation most likely to be contested.

How a court adjudicates the amount, and how to build the schedule

Before executing on a support judgment whose amount has not already been determined by a court, the person seeking to enforce it must send a notice by certified mail, restricted delivery, return receipt requested, to the responsible parent. The notice must specify the court that issued the order and the date of issuance, state the amount of arrearages accrued, state that the arrearages will be enforced as a judgment, and explain that the responsible parent may, within 20 days after the notice is sent, ask for a hearing before a Nevada court concerning the amount (NRS 125B.140(2)(a)). The issues at that hearing are limited to the amount of the arrearages and the jurisdiction of the issuing court; the court takes evidence, determines the amount, and issues its order for that amount together with interest and fees (NRS 125B.140(2)(b) and (c)). The notice requirement does not apply once any court has already determined the amount of the judgment (NRS 125B.140(3)), and it also yields to the lien procedures in NRS 125B.142 and 125B.144.

The arrears schedule is the evidence at that hearing. Built correctly it lists, in order: every installment with its due date and ordered amount; every payment with its date, applied oldest-first unless designated for a specific period (Foster v. Marshman, 96 Nev. 475 (1980)); the running unpaid principal; simple interest on each installment from its due date at the NRS 99.040 rate, segmented at each January 1 and July 1 (NRS 125B.140(2)(c); Torres v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 130 Nev. 22 (2014)); for pre-2020 delinquencies, the former NRS 125B.095 penalty stopped at February 1, 2020; and the totals of principal, interest and penalty as of a stated date, with the rate table appended.

The arrears tool at /calculators/arrears produces exactly that schedule from an order and a payment history, states its day-count and payment-application conventions, and attaches the statutory rate table for the period covered.

This explainer is general information about Nevada law and is not legal advice. Whether a court will find undue hardship, how a disputed payment should be credited, and how to present a decades-long history are questions for a licensed Nevada attorney.