TAYLOR VS. TAYLOR (RETIREMENT DIVISION)

Statutes cited

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

In consolidated appeals presenting identical issues of law, the court reversed district court judgments that had partitioned the husbands' military retirement benefits under NRS 125.161. Enacted in 1987, NRS 125.161 authorized post-divorce partition of military retirement benefits (other than disability benefits) by the ex-spouse where the decree did not provide for their disposition, effectively reversing Tomlinson v. Tomlinson, 102 Nev. 652, 729 P.2d 1363 (1986), which had held such post-divorce partition barred by res judicata. After the wives prevailed below, the Governor signed Senate Bill 11 (1989 Nev. Stat. ch. 34) on March 20, 1989, effective immediately, repealing NRS 125.161 and terminating the jurisdiction of the district courts over pending NRS 125.161 actions; the Act preserved only 'final judgments' (those not timely appealed, or appealed and affirmed). The court read Senate Bill 11 as intended to prevent all Nevada courts, including the Supreme Court, from granting statutory partition in any case still pending when the Act was signed. The court rejected the wives' contention that the divisions could be affirmed on common-law community property principles. Although Senate Bill 11 restored the common law by voiding the legislative intervention, the pre-NRS 125.161 decisional law held that, absent extrinsic fraud, an ex-spouse may not bring a new cause of action to partition retirement benefits after the property agreement has become a judgment. See Tomlinson, 102 Nev. 652, 729 P.2d 1363. The court declined to recognize a common-law cause of action for such post-judgment partition and reversed, instructing the district court to enter judgment for the appellant husbands.

In plain language

This consolidated appeal turned on a rapidly changing statute. In 1987, the Nevada legislature passed a law (NRS 125.161) that let an ex-spouse of a military retiree go back to court and divide the retiree's military retirement benefits by the time served during the marriage - but only if those benefits had not already been divided in the divorce property agreement. That law effectively reversed an earlier Nevada Supreme Court decision (Tomlinson v. Tomlinson) which had held that trying to divide retirement benefits after the divorce was over was barred by the rule against relitigating settled matters (res judicata). The wives in these cases used the new statute to sue to divide their former husbands' military retirement benefits, and the district court ruled in their favor, dividing the benefits. But then, on March 20, 1989, the governor signed Senate Bill 11, which repealed NRS 125.161 effective immediately. Senate Bill 11 also said that the courts - including the Nevada Supreme Court - would immediately lose jurisdiction over any case brought under NRS 125.161 that was on appeal but not yet affirmed. The Nevada Supreme Court held that Senate Bill 11 wiped out the statutory basis for these partition actions in any case still pending when the governor signed it. The wives argued that, even without the statute, the court could still uphold the divisions using ordinary community-property principles. The court disagreed. It explained that before NRS 125.161 existed, Nevada law - based on res judicata (Tomlinson) - did not allow a new lawsuit to divide retirement benefits after a divorce property agreement had become a final judgment, absent fraud. The court refused to recognize any such common-law claim. So, with the statute repealed and no common-law substitute, the court reversed the divisions and directed the trial court to enter judgment for the husbands.