DECHERT VS. DECHERT (CHILD SUPPORT)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

Appeal from a post-decree order denying defendant's motion, made more than a year after entry of a final divorce decree awarding the plaintiff wife support and $100 per month for the minor child, to change the decree's terms so as to disallow the child-support item. The four grounds - counsel's alleged violation of instructions not to consent, conflict with a pre-trial agreement settling wife-and-child allowances, conflict with a trust deed securing that agreement, and fraud on the court - all sought entry of a different decree rather than modification for changed conditions. The court noted that because the decree reserved modification of the allowance, the district court had authority to modify on a proper showing (citing Sweeney v. Sweeney, 42 Nev. 431, 179 Pac. 638), but distinguished sharply between modification for changed conditions and revamping the decree itself, and flagged without deciding whether a court is bound by an extrajudicial agreement of the parties as to an allowance for a minor child. Dispositive: none of the matters relied on could appear in the record proper; they required a bill of exceptions settled per Stats. 1915, c. 142, sec. 6, p. 165 (by stipulation or order of the trial judge or court), and none was in the record (Corcoran v. Dodge, 45 Nev. 406). No error appearing from the record proper, the order was affirmed.

In plain language

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