WEEKS VS. WEEKS (DIVORCE PROPERTY & ALIMONY)

Statutes cited

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

On this second appeal from a post-remand judgment in a divorce action, the court addressed (1) the procedure of reassigning the case for redistribution to a judge who had not heard the original testimony, and (2) an award of interest on deferred payments. As to procedure, a judge empowered to hear a case may, in his discretion, request another judge to assume jurisdiction, and need not state reasons; the assignment appearing on the minutes was sufficient. State v. Blackwell, 65 Nev. 405, 198 P.2d 280, 200 P.2d 698 (1948). Deciding the redistribution question from the transcript was not prejudicial where the appellant did not request a new trial, argued his own motion from the transcript, suggested no further evidence, and showed no change of conditions in the five years since trial. Equal distribution of community property appears to be the rule in most cases and was proper here; it did not offend the statutory command that disposition be just and equitable, having regard to the respective merits of the parties, the condition in which they will be left by the divorce, and the party through whom the property was acquired (NRS 125.150). The court's prior reversal had freed the trial court to reconsider distribution to compensate the husband for the loss of the securities, not to further increase his obligations; imposing new interest on deferred payments from the existing record contravened that purpose. The judgment was therefore modified to delete the interest requirement, except that delinquent installments would bear interest at 7 percent per annum from the date of delinquency.

In plain language

This was the second time this divorce case reached the Nevada Supreme Court. In the first appeal (72 Nev. 268), the court had ruled that roughly $120,000 in securities the trial court had treated as the husband's separate property were actually owned by both spouses as joint tenants, which effectively shifted about $60,000 in value from the husband to the wife. The court sent the case back so the trial judge could decide, in light of that change, whether to redistribute the community property. On remand, the original trial judge (Judge Wines) assigned the case to a different judge (Judge Watson), who reviewed the trial transcript without hearing new testimony. Judge Watson kept the community property split equal despite the securities ruling, and also ordered the husband to pay the wife 6 percent interest on deferred payments owed under the original decree, which had said nothing about interest. The husband appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court held it was not error for one judge to disqualify himself and assign the case to another judge who decided the matter from the transcript, especially since the husband never asked for a new trial, never offered new evidence, and never showed any change in the parties' circumstances since trial. The court agreed that an equal division of the community property was proper. But it held the trial court should not have added a new interest obligation increasing the husband's burden based on the existing record alone. The court modified the judgment to delete that interest requirement, except that any delinquent payment would bear 7 percent interest from the date it became delinquent, and otherwise affirmed.