HARRIS VS. HARRIS (PATERNITY)

Statutes cited

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

The court reversed a post-decree order declaring that a child previously adjudged the issue of the marriage was not the respondent's child and setting aside prior support and custody orders. Although NRS 125.140(2) confers continuing jurisdiction to modify custody and support to meet changed circumstances, it presumes the children are the children of the parties and may not be used to collaterally attack the parties' status. Paternity adjudicated incident to a divorce decree is res judicata as between the parties; because the paternity issue was pleaded, litigated, and determined in the 1975 proceeding and not appealed, its relitigation was barred, and the district court erred in readjudicating it.

In plain language

When Alice and Melvin Harris divorced in 1975, Melvin denied that he was the father of Alice's child. Blood tests did not exclude him, and the divorce court adjudged him the father, ordering him to pay child support and provide medical and dental care. He did not appeal. About a year later he asked to reduce the support (denied), and two years after the decree he asked the court to modify the decree on the ground that the child was not his natural child. The district court agreed, declared the child was not Melvin's, and set aside all prior support and custody orders. Alice appealed, and the Nevada Supreme Court reversed. The court held that the paternity question had already been litigated and decided in the 1975 divorce, so it could not be reopened - the doctrine of res judicata (and collateral estoppel) barred relitigating it. The statute that lets courts modify support and custody after a divorce exists to address changes in circumstances affecting the children of the parties; it cannot be used as a backdoor to attack the parties' status by relitigating paternity. The court noted that Melvin's earlier request to reduce support looked more like acceptance of parenthood than a denial of it.