MILLER VS. MILLER (CHILD CUSTODY)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

This is a procedural dismissal under NRAP 3E(i) for failure to file a fast track statement in a child custody/support appeal. The clerk issued the standard notice on April 13, 2022, setting a May 23, 2022 deadline for the fast track statement. After noncompliance, the court issued an August 8, 2022 order extending the deadline to August 22, 2022 and cautioning that further noncompliance could result in sanctions including dismissal. The pro se appellant neither filed the statement nor communicated with the court. The court treated the inaction as abandonment and dismissed. The order makes no merits determination regarding the underlying denial of modification of child support or the award of attorney fees and costs.

In plain language

A father asked a Nevada family court to lower his child support obligation. The family court denied the request and ordered him to pay the other side's attorney fees and costs. He then appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court without a lawyer. In appeals of this type, the appellant must file a document called a "fast track statement" - a short written explanation of the appeal - by a deadline set by the court clerk. The clerk set a deadline of May 23, 2022. When the father missed it, the Supreme Court gave him a second chance, extending the deadline to August 22, 2022, and warning him that missing it again could result in dismissal. He did not file the statement and did not contact the court at all. Because the father took no further action, the Supreme Court concluded he had abandoned the appeal and dismissed it. The court did not decide whether the family court's child support or attorney-fee rulings were right or wrong; it dismissed solely for failure to prosecute the appeal.