The Better Chancery Practice Blog

Yesterday we visited the case of Dennis v. Dennis, in which the MSSC upheld the self-imposed obligation of a step-great-grandfather to pay child support for a 12-year-old child who refused to have a relationship with him.

A few observations:

• Even if Dennis made a severe error in judgment by agreeing to pay child support on the mistaken belief that he was required to do so, that will not get him termination of his child support obligation. The court can modify only upon a showing of a material change in circumstances.
• Parties are free to agree to all sorts of things in a PSA that a court could not impose on them in a contested framework. For instance, the husband could agree to provide college support until the child attains age 25; no judge could order that outside the parties’ agreement. A party could agree to provide health insurance for step-children to a certain age; again, something no chancellor could unilaterally order. Here, Dennis agreed to support JRH, legal obligation or none. That agreement is enforceable under this case and long-standing authority.
• The dissent argues that the chancellor may only approve agreements for support of the children of the parties, per MCA 93-5-23 (and 93-5-2). The majority looked to the Mississippi Constitution as the source of the chancellor’s authority. Taking either route, however, I think the fact that Dennis voluntarily took on custody of JRH vested him with responsibilities under the law that could have and should have been addressed in the divorce. Dennis should not be allowed to extinguish his obligations to the child via divorce.
• To tag onto the above, although the statutes refer to the children of the marriage, there is nothing in the statutes that prohibits the parties from agreeing to support other children, or even other adults. The cases that have analyzed the parties’ negotiations and agreement-making in the context of irreconcilable-differences divorces (including this one) all resonate with the theme that the parties should be free to make any agreement that makes adequate and sufficient provision for settlement of property and support of children. I argue that the wider the latitude given the parties to negotiate the lesser the likelihood that the familiar and all-too-common “divorce blackmail” phenomenon can be brought to bear.
• The fact that the natural parents continue to have a support obligation to JRH, and continue to visit, also avail Dennis nothing. He agreed to the arrangement, self-imposing a support duty parallel to the parents’.
• And Dennis’s agreement to much more, probably, than what the judge would have imposed on him in the custody matter were it contested makes him a poster child for litigants like him who eschew legal advice for expediency. Sans fraud that can’t be undone.
• As for the hostility of JRH, this case is right in line with the many cases that have dealt with the phenomenon. The facts must be extreme and the parent seeking to invoke it must not be at fault. To those parameters you can add, thanks to Dennis, that the age and maturity of the child must be taken into account.