ORMACHEA VS. ORMACHEA (DIVORCE PROPERTY & ALIMONY)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

On the respondent wife's motion for allowances pending the appellant husband's appeal from an October 13, 1948 decree granting her a divorce for extreme cruelty, awarding her custody of the four younger minor children, the Kallenbach Ranch (subject to the husband's 30-day, $30,000 repurchase option), $10,000, and $70,000 payable in installments over up to seventeen years secured by a lien, with $35 per month per child payable out of the $10,000. Execution had been stayed on a $20,000 undertaking fixed by the district court. The wife sought a $5,000 attorney fee and $500 per month; her affidavit showed an accrued hotel bill of $465.41 at Fallon and no funds, while the husband's counter-affidavit urged that she had taken about $3,600 when she filed suit, had received four $500 payments under a prior order, and that livestock losses had diminished his resources. The court, finding the wife's necessities and the husband's ability to pay sufficiently shown (the merits would involve his challenges to the trial court's findings of a common-law marriage and of community property, on a 500-600 page record), ordered payment forthwith of the $465.41 hotel bill directly to the Grand Hotel, Fallon; $1,000 to the wife's attorneys as fees on appeal; and $250 per month for the support of the wife and the minor children in her custody until determination of the appeal or further order. Whether the monthly payments are chargeable against the $10,000 item was left to abide the merits; the stay order and bond otherwise remained in effect. The subsequent decision on the merits is reported at Ormachea v. Ormachea, 67 Nev. 273, 217 P.2d 355 (1950).

In plain language

A wife won a divorce for extreme cruelty after a marriage of about seventeen years that produced seven children. The decree gave her custody of the four youngest, the Kallenbach Ranch in Churchill County (subject to the husband's option to buy it back for $30,000), $10,000, and another $70,000 payable over as long as seventeen years, secured by a lien - roughly $110,000 in all. The husband appealed and obtained a stay of the judgment by posting a $20,000 bond, which left the wife unable to collect while living with one child at a hotel in Fallon with an unpaid bill of $465.41. On her motion for support and fees while the appeal was pending, the Nevada Supreme Court found her necessity and the husband's ability to pay sufficiently shown - the parties' property was worth well over $100,000 - and ordered the husband to pay the accrued hotel bill directly to the hotel, $1,000 to her attorneys for the appeal, and $250 per month for the support of the wife and the children in her custody until the appeal was decided. Whether those monthly payments would be charged against the $10,000 award was left for the decision on the merits, and the stay bond otherwise remained in effect.