Background
Brian Ribera (Father), a retired Navy veteran who served for most of the marriage, and Jennifer Ribera (Mother) were married in 2009 and had three children together. Mother was the primary caregiver during Father’s active service and subsequent contract work, while Father founded a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Military Mobility, intended to support veterans in civilian transition. The marriage deteriorated, and Mother filed for divorce in March 2024, simultaneously obtaining an ex parte protective order. In August 2024, after a multi-day evidentiary hearing, a circuit court granted Mother a one-year domestic violence protection order against Father while still granting him alternating-week parenting time.
The Park County District Court issued its divorce decree in July 2025. It awarded Mother primary physical custody—approximately 60% of parenting time—with substantial parenting time for Father. The court ordered Father to pay Mother $624,500 to equalize the marital estate: $536,000 for her share of equity in four real properties (two pre-marital California and Virginia properties plus a Cody, Wyoming home acquired during the marriage); $58,500 representing approximately half the value of 15 financial accounts listed in Father’s initial disclosures, including an account held by Drive Growth LLC; and $30,000 for vehicles, boats, a camper, trailers, and motorcycles that Father had transferred to Military Mobility or co-titled with that entity after Mother filed for divorce. The district court found those transfers were “suspicious at best or an egregious attempt to hide the property” from the divorce proceedings. The court also ordered the parties to share Sadie, the family goldendoodle, on the same custody schedule as the children.
Father appealed on four grounds: (1) the district court abused its discretion by denying his W.R.C.P. 35 motion for psychological evaluations of both parties; (2) the award of primary custody to Mother was improper given his allegations of her substance abuse and parental alienation; (3) the court improperly attributed to him assets titled to Military Mobility and Drive Growth LLC; and (4) the court erred in ordering shared dog custody.
The Court’s Holding
The Wyoming Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Fenn joined by all five justices, affirmed on all four issues. On the Rule 35 psychological evaluation motion, the court held the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying it as both untimely and lacking good cause. Father had been on notice of the underlying allegations since at least July 2024 when he filed initial disclosures raising Mother’s substance abuse, yet he waited until March 2025—less than a month before trial—to move for evaluations. At the hearing, he conceded the evaluations would require a “several months” continuance. The court distinguished Domenico v. Daniel, 2024 WY 2, 541 P.3d 420, where the GAL’s motion could have been completed without disrupting the trial schedule. Good cause under Rule 35 requires more than relevance; it demands that each mental condition be “really and genuinely in controversy” and that information cannot be obtained through other means. Father’s motion rested on conclusory allegations about outdated events—a 2017 DUI and concerns from a 2008 custody proceeding—without identifying current mental health concerns. The guardian ad litem himself did not recommend evaluations.
On custody, the court found no abuse of discretion. The district court expressly considered the statutory factors under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-2-201(a), including Mother’s documented history of alcohol use, but found she had been substantially sober for approximately two years before trial. Father himself had left the children in Mother’s primary care throughout the marriage, including during the period of heaviest alcohol use. On parental alienation, Father relied almost entirely on the GAL’s proposed findings of fact—which are not evidence—and his own testimony about his beliefs; neither established that the children were expressing persistent, unreasonable negative feelings toward Father disproportionate to their actual experience with him. The Supreme Court will not reweigh evidence the district court was best positioned to evaluate.
On property division, the court held the district court permissibly reached the assets transferred to Military Mobility under Breitenstine v. Breitenstine, 2003 WY 16, 62 P.3d 587. Multiple badges of fraud were present: Father received no consideration (not even a tax-deductible acknowledgment) for transfers of vehicles worth tens of thousands of dollars; he retained full access to those assets as Military Mobility’s self-designated “caretaker”; there was a close relationship between the transferor and the transferee; and the transfers occurred just over a month after Mother filed for divorce. Critically, the district court did not pierce Military Mobility’s corporate form or award Mother the nonprofit’s assets—it ordered Father to pay an equitable cash amount reflecting the value of property the parties had used as a family during the marriage. The Drive Growth LLC account likewise was properly folded into the overall property division: Wyoming courts review the equity of a marital property distribution based on the overall result, not any single transaction. Under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 20-2-114(a), all property—including pre-marital and business assets—is subject to just and equitable distribution. On Sadie, the invited error doctrine ended the inquiry: Father’s own trial testimony expressly stated he would be “absolutely” okay sharing the dog on the children’s schedule, and a party cannot appeal a ruling it induced the court to enter.
Key Takeaways
- A W.R.C.P. 35 motion for psychological evaluations filed less than a month before trial—requiring a multi-month continuance—is untimely even when the underlying concerns appeared months earlier in the movant’s own disclosures.
- Good cause under Rule 35 cannot be established through conclusory allegations about a parent’s past behavior; the movant must show current mental health concerns that are genuinely in controversy and not obtainable through other discovery.
- Wyoming courts will reach assets a spouse transferred to a controlled entity during pending divorce proceedings when the badges of fraud from Breitenstine are present—lack of consideration, retention of benefit, suspicious timing—without formally disregarding the entity’s separate legal existence.
- Proposed findings of fact submitted by a party or guardian ad litem are not evidence; they are interpretations of the evidence the court may accept or reject, and they cannot substitute for record testimony on appeal.
- The invited error doctrine precludes a party from challenging a dog-custody arrangement that the party’s own in-court statement invited the district court to order.
Why It Matters
Ribera v. Ribera offers Wyoming family-law practitioners a consolidated treatment of four recurring divorce-litigation issues in a single Supreme Court opinion. The Rule 35 discussion clarifies that a tactical motion filed on the eve of trial will fail on timeliness and good cause grounds and that the narrow Domenico exception applies only when evaluations can be completed without disrupting the trial. Practitioners handling high-conflict custody cases with historical substance-abuse or mental-health allegations should obtain Rule 35 evaluations early or risk waiving the remedy entirely. The property-division holding reinforces that Wyoming courts will look through attempted transfers of marital assets to controlled entities when the Breitenstine badges of fraud are present—and that 501(c)(3) restrictions on asset distribution do not shield vehicles and equipment a spouse personally purchased, personally used, and transferred without consideration after divorce papers were filed.
The parental alienation discussion also carries practical significance. The court declined to formally adopt a definition of parental alienation but referenced current literature defining it as a child’s persistent, unreasonable negative feelings toward a parent disproportionate to the child’s actual experience. Counsel should build parental alienation arguments from record testimony—including GAL testimony at trial—not from proposed findings of fact, which the appellate court cannot treat as evidence.