Lewis v. Cameron-Nichols

NOTICE: NOT FOR OFFICIAL PUBLICATION.
UNDER ARIZONA RULE OF THE SUPREME COURT 111(c), THIS DECISION IS NOT PRECEDENTIAL
AND MAY BE CITED ONLY AS AUTHORIZED BY RULE.

IN THE
ARIZONA COURT OF APPEALS
DIVISION ONE

In Re the Matter of:

CHARITY LEWIS, Petitioner/Appellant,

v.

JESSICA CAMERON-NICHOLS, Respondent/Appellee.

No. 1 CA-CV 26-0087 FC
FILED 10-23-2026

Appeal from the Superior Court in Maricopa County
No. FC2019-098347
The Honorable Gregory J. Gnepper, Judge Pro Tempore

AFFIRMED

COUNSEL

Charity Lewis, Lafayette, LA
Petitioner/Appellant

Barreda Law, PLLC, Gilbert
By Joshua A. Barreda
Counsel for Respondent/Appellee

LEWIS v. CAMERON-NICHOLS
Decision of the Court

MEMORANDUM DECISION

Presiding Judge Jennifer M. Perkins delivered the decision of the Court, in
which Judge Brian Y. Furuya and Judge D. Andrew Gaona joined.

P E R K I N S, Judge:

¶1 Charity Lewis appeals from the superior court’s November
2025 order related to legal decision making, parenting time, and child
support. Because she failed to establish an abuse of discretion, we affirm.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

¶2 Charity Lewis and Jessica Cameron-Nichols have two
children, aged nine and ten. The parties divorced in 2020 and have engaged
in continuous litigation since. It is not necessary to recount the parties’
complete litigation history; instead, we describe the background details
necessary for our review of the rulings at issue on appeal. In this decision,
we refer to the parents by their first names to ensure clarity and consistency
with the superior court’s adopted protocol; we mean no disrespect.

¶3 The superior court held an evidentiary hearing in November
2025 to resolve pending disputes on parenting time and legal decision-
making, including Charity’s pending request to relocate the children to
Louisiana, as well as Charity’s January 2025 contempt petition. Both parties’
amended pre-trial statements also identified child support as a disputed
issue, and both parties submitted affidavits of financial information to the
court ahead of the hearing. This hearing was the parties’ fifth trial in
eighteen months, and their eighth overall.

Parenting Time and Legal Decision-Making Issues

¶4 Through their various pleadings, both the parties asked the
court to change the current parenting time orders. Charity submitted a
comprehensive proposed new parenting plan, in which she asked for the
children to be relocated to Louisiana, making her the primary residential
parent, and for the airport used to exchange the children to be in Houston,
TX, rather than Lafayette, LA. Charity also requested that the parties
continue to have joint legal decision-making authority, but that final
tiebreaking authority change from Jessica to Charity. Jessica asked that each
parent be responsible for retrieving the children from the other parent for

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exchanges—so Charity would collect the children in Arizona and Jessica
would collect them in Louisiana. And Jessica asked the court to modify the
phone call schedule from 7:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in the children’s location.

¶5 The superior court denied Charity’s relocation request but
granted her request to move the exchange airport from Lafayette to
Houston. It denied Jessica’s modification request on the exchange location
and maintained the previous requirement that each party bear the expense
of the travel to the other parent’s location. And the court modified the
phone call schedule to 5:00 p.m. in the children’s location.

Child Support

¶6 On November 30, 2024, Charity petitioned to modify child
support and attached a child support worksheet. In December 2024, she
asked the court to consolidate hearings for several pending requests for
enforcement, modification, and contempt. The court denied that request in
January 2025. And the court held a hearing in February 2025 that did not
take up the petition to modify child support.

¶7 In several pre-trial filings, Charity asked the court to
recalculate child support. The record contains Charity’s financial affidavit,
Jessica’s financial affidavit, and Charity’s child support worksheet.
Charity’s pretrial statement clarifies that she sought recalculation due to
Jessica’s increased income, which she understood to result from overtime
pay. Jessica’s pretrial statement noted that she “has no objection to a re-
calculation of child support based on the changes to the Parties’ respective
incomes and respective additional credits to both parents for an additional
child not subject to this litigation.” Jessica’s affidavit of financial
information included her 2022 and 2023 tax return information. Her 2023
tax return showed a more than ten-fold increase in taxable income from
2022.

¶8 The superior court’s minute entry regarding the November
2025 evidentiary hearing did not list the November 2024 petition to modify
as one of the matters it took up. But the court’s subsequent order
affirmatively declined to recalculate child support: “Although the Court
took testimony about the parties’ finances, there was no indication of a
significant change for either party and the trial did not focus on child
support or financial relief.” The court affirmed the existing child support
order and all existing related awards and judgments.

¶9 Charity moved for reconsideration, which the court denied.
She then asked the court to stay enforcement of its order pending the

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outcome of her appeal; the court also denied this request. She moved for
reconsideration of that ruling, which the court again denied.

¶10 Charity timely appealed and we have jurisdiction. A.R.S. § 12-
2101(A)(1).

DISCUSSION

¶11 Charity identified eight issues on appeal, which we distill into
three areas: (1) the superior court’s parenting time and legal decision-
making orders, including its weighing of best-interests factors under
Section 25-403, orders on travel arrangements for exchanging the children,
and communication schedule with the children; (2) child support and
financial evidence; and (3) denial of a stay pending appeal.

¶12 Before reaching these issues, we note preliminary concerns
that made our review difficult. First, Charity failed to provide a transcript
of the November 2025 hearing. When a party fails to provide a transcript,
we “assume [it] would support the court’s findings and conclusions.” Baker
v. Baker, 183 Ariz. 70, 73 (App. 1995).

¶13 Second, Charity’s opening brief violates our rules. The brief
identifies few case-specific facts and provides no citations to the trial record.
We require a statement of facts and record citations when referencing
earlier proceedings. ARCAP 13(a)(5), (7). We also require citations to legal
authorities supporting a party’s arguments. ARCAP 13(a)(7). Charity cites
legal authorities, but many (if not most) of the authorities are cited
incorrectly. We may consider an argument waived if it is “not supported by
adequate explanation, citations to the record, or authority.” Ramos v.
Nichols, 252 Ariz. 519, 522 ¶ 8 (App. 2022) (cleaned up). But because the
children’s best interests are at issue, we decline to treat Charity’s arguments
as waived. Solorzano v. Jensen, 250 Ariz. 348, 350 ¶ 8 (App. 2020) (“We
typically decline to find waiver [when] a child’s best interests are at issue.”).

¶14 We note that Charity’s legal citation errors and other
formatting factors suggest her brief may have been generated using an
artificial intelligence (AI) tool. We do not forbid the use of AI by litigants,
but “all who file documents with the courts remain directly and personally
responsible for the content, accuracy, and quality of legal filings.” Matter of
Estate of Acciavatti, ___ P.3d ___, 2026 WL 2041963, at *4 ¶ 18 (App. July 15,
2026).

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I. The court did not abuse its discretion in its parenting time or
legal decision-making rulings.

¶15 We review legal decision-making authority and parenting
time orders for abuse of discretion. DeLuna v. Petitto, 247 Ariz. 420, 423 ¶ 9
(App. 2019). A court abuses its discretion when it “commits an error of law
in reaching a discretionary decision or when the record does not support
the court’s decision.” Id. We accept the court’s explicit and implicit factual
findings unless clearly erroneous, Hoobler v. Hoobler, 254 Ariz. 130, 141 ¶ 26
(App. 2022), and will not reweigh evidence or determine credibility on
appeal, Vanwormer v. Lopez, 259 Ariz. 87, 90 ¶ 9 (App. 2025).

¶16 When deciding legal decision-making authority and
parenting time, the court must consider the children’s best interests using
factors listed in Section 25-403. DeLuna, 247 Ariz. at 423 ¶ 11. In doing so,
the court must “make specific findings on the record about all relevant
factors and the reasons for which the decision is in the best interests of the
child.” A.R.S. § 25-403(B).

¶17 The superior court addressed in detail the Section 25-403(A)
best-interests factors. Charity’s challenges to the court’s findings on those
factors, as well as her disagreement with the court’s rulings on the
children’s travel for parenting time exchanges and phone communication
while with the other parent are all challenges to how the court weighed the
evidence it received. As previously noted, we do not reweigh evidence on
appeal. And because we do not have a transcript of the trial, we must
assume it would support each of the court’s rulings. Baker, 183 Ariz. at 73.

¶18 Charity failed to establish that the court abused its discretion
in its parenting time and legal decision-making orders.

II. The court did not abuse its discretion in affirming previous
child support orders.

¶19 We review a child support award for abuse of discretion.
Hetherington v. Hetherington, 220 Ariz. 16, 21 ¶ 21 (App. 2008).

¶20 As described above, the superior court did not initially list the
November 2024 child support modification petition in its identification of
pending matters before it for the November 2025 hearing. But it
substantively ruled on the question of child support, declining to
recalculate child support despite Charity’s request and Jessica’s
acquiescence noted in the parties’ pretrial statements. In doing so, the court
apparently thought it had no child support worksheet, but one was

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attached to Charity’s original modification petition. In affirming the
previous orders without recalculation, the court relied on the parties’
failure to “focus on child support or financial relief at trial” and its
determination that “there was no indication of a significant change for
either party.”

¶21 The record does contain an indication of a potentially
significant change: Jessica’s 2023 tax return, attached to her affidavit of
financial information, showed her income had increased significantly from
her 2022 tax return. But we lack a 2024 return to confirm whether that was
unusual or a trend. Charity characterized the increase as based on overtime
pay, which might be included in gross income for purposes of child support
calculation. See Hoobler v. Hoobler, 254 Ariz. 130, 140–41¶ 24 (App. 2022)
(overtime pay does not generally count toward a parent’s income for child
support circumstances, but in some cases the court has the discretion to
count overtime). Without a transcript, we do not know whether any
testimony addressed the circumstances of Jessica’s pay increase. And we
are bound to presume the testimony—or lack of testimony—supports the
superior court’s decision not to recalculate. Baker, 183 Ariz. at 73.

¶22 Perhaps a future petition to modify and related evidence
could demonstrate that a recalculation is in order. But Charity did not
establish, based on the record we have on appeal, that the superior court
abused its discretion by affirming the previous child support orders.

III. We do not have jurisdiction to address the court’s denial of
Charity’s stay request.

¶23 Charity also challenges the superior court’s denial of her
motion to stay proceedings pending appeal. But she did not raise this issue
in her notice of appeal. So we do not have jurisdiction over that ruling and
do not consider it. ARCAP 8(c)(3).

IV. Fees on appeal

¶24 Jessica requested attorney fees under Section 25-324. We have
considered the parties’ financial resources and their arguments on appeal.
Given Charity’s apparent and problematic use of generative AI, w e find
that Jessica is entitled to a reasonable portion of her attorney fees, as well as
her costs, incurred in this appeal once she complies with ARCAP 21(b).

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Decision of the Court

CONCLUSION

¶25 We affirm.

MATTHEW J. MARTIN • Clerk of the Court
FILED: JR

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