ENGLE VS. ENGLE (CHILD SUPPORT)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

Appeal from an order denying a motion to modify a 1944 divorce decree to add child support. The decree awarded custody to the mother and "expressly reserve[d] and retain[ed] jurisdiction over the said minor child" with power to modify orders "in connection therewith" during minority, but ordered no support. Held: (a) absent a reservation of jurisdiction, a court cannot modify a decree to provide child support after the six-month period of District Court Rule XLV (Sweeney v. Sweeney, 42 Nev. 431; Dechert v. Dechert, 46 Nev. 140; Aseltine v. District Court, 57 Nev. 269); but (b) the reservation here was broad enough to include child support and should be given reasonable intendment, bearing in mind the nature of the action and the presumption that the court was concerned for the child's welfare, which includes adequate support; where a reservation is capable of two constructions, the one consonant with the judgment that should have been rendered is adopted. Reversed and remanded.

In plain language

A 1944 divorce decree awarded the mother custody of the parties' roughly two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and expressly stated that the court "reserve[d] and retain[ed] jurisdiction over the said minor child" and could modify its orders "in connection therewith" at any time until the child reached adulthood. The decree, however, did not order the father to pay child support. In 1945 the mother moved to modify the decree to require support. The trial court refused, reasoning that it had not reserved jurisdiction over support specifically and that more than six months had passed since the decree. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed. It agreed that, without any reservation of jurisdiction, a court cannot modify a decree to add child support after the six-month period. But here the decree's broad reservation of jurisdiction over the child was reasonably read to include the power to order support. The court must be presumed to have been concerned for the child's welfare, which includes adequate support as well as care and custody. The case was reversed and sent back for further proceedings.