White v. Laingor

This case arises from a Probate and Family Court judge’s enforcement of an agreement between divorced parents of two children in which the mother agreed to accept a reduced lump-sum payment for child support arrearages in exchange for the father’s consent to the adoption of the children by her new husband. When the adoption did not occur, the father argued that his mere consent to the adoption sufficed to bind the parties to the terms of the agreement. The mother countered that the probate judge’s enforcement of the reduced lump-sum payment provision was contrary to public policy and, in the…