Reported / Citable
Background
Lewis Allen and Danielle Brown were married in 1982 and had four children. Danielle filed for divorce in 1996; the 1998 judgment required Lewis to pay $3,200 per month in family support. After Danielle remarried in 2002, the court ordered $2,500 per month in child support plus $1,000 toward arrearages, later reduced to $1,932. Lewis made some payments but was found contemptuous, and he eventually moved out of the United States, making only infrequent payments. The youngest child turned 18 in 2008.
Almost 20 years later, Lewis emailed Danielle to discuss resolving the arrearages, which Danielle calculated at about $545,000 with interest. They negotiated; Lewis agreed in November 2020 to pay $272,500 in installments. After Lewis made his payments, he asked Danielle to sign a stipulated ‘accord and satisfaction’ waiving any remaining arrearages. Danielle declined. Lewis filed a request for order asking the trial court to find a binding accord and satisfaction. The trial court denied the request. Lewis appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal affirmed. Building on In re Marriage of Sabine & Toshio M. — which held that parents cannot contractually waive child-support arrearages while the child is still a minor — the court extended the rule to arrearages owed for periods when the children were minors, even after those children have reached the age of majority. The reasoning is straightforward: child support belongs to the child, not the parent, and the receiving parent is ‘but a mere conduit for the disbursement of that support.’ That fundamental policy does not change when the children grow up.
Allowing parents to bargain away unpaid child-support arrearages after the children’s majority would effectively let parents trade the children’s already-vested support rights for the parent’s own benefit. California’s strong policy in favor of children’s welfare and full support enforcement bars that result. Even if Lewis and Danielle had reached an enforceable agreement, the agreement could not extinguish the arrearages.
The court also rejected Lewis’s accord-and-satisfaction argument because there was no bona fide dispute about the amount of arrearages. The trial court had ample basis to find no enforceable agreement and no proper accord and satisfaction.
Key Takeaways
- Parents cannot contractually waive or compromise child-support arrearages, even after the children have reached the age of majority.
- The receiving parent is a mere conduit for the children’s support; the parent cannot bargain away the children’s already-vested support rights.
- Accord and satisfaction requires a bona fide dispute over the amount owed; settled arrearage amounts cannot be discounted by parental agreement.
- Obligor parents seeking to resolve large arrearages should pursue them through the court rather than through informal agreements with the receiving parent.
- The decision is a published statewide rule extending Sabine & Toshio M. to post-majority arrearages.
Why It Matters
For California family-law practitioners, the decision provides important clarity on the limits of parental compromise of child-support obligations. Even decades after the children’s majority, the original support obligation remains an obligation that runs to the children, not the receiving parent. Obligors who hope to settle accumulated arrearages by negotiating with the receiving parent will find courts unwilling to enforce such deals.
For obligor parents and their counsel, the practical lesson is to pursue formal court processes — for example, seeking modification of the support order, motion to compromise interest, or hardship-based reductions — rather than relying on informal agreements with the receiving parent. For receiving parents, the case is reassurance that pressure to sign waivers cannot eliminate the children’s support rights, even years later.