Opinion ID: 1989400
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Modification and Waiver

Text: Mr. Nolan further argues that, notwithstanding the court's finding concerning an oral modification or waiver by Mrs. Nolan, the documentary evidence establishes that she agreed to forgo direct child support payments as called for by the contract during the months David and Ellen were at college. Mr. Nolan relies on a series of letters between Mrs. Nolan (or her attorney) and Mr. Nolan, particularly letters dated June 13, 1985 and May 16, 1986, in which she made no objection to his failure to send child support payments to her during the college year. Mr. Nolan contends that the letters admit of only one inference: Mrs. Nolan understood his duty to pay child support to her to depend on whether the children lived at home, which amounted to a waiver or modification of the original agreement. The letters undeniably give us pause. If Mrs. Nolan believed that appellant had wrongfully withheld payments to her during the school year, one might reasonably expect her to have said so in the letters rather than, for example, to insist that he remit two-thirds of the support payment for May 1986 because David had come home on May 9. Moreover, the trial court's rejection of appellant's waiver/modification defense is made troublesome by its suggestion that no conduct other than express written modification of the agreement could change the provision calling for direct payment of child support to Mrs. Nolan [8]  a suggestion contrary to law. See Clark, supra note 6, 535 A.2d at 876 (oral modification of separation agreement valid despite provision in contract prohibiting such modifications). We are persuaded, however, that at bottom the court assumed that the parties could modify the written agreement by subsequent conduct, including acquiescence, but found as a fact that Mrs. Nolan had never agreed to forgo direct child support payments as specified in the agreement. The court summarized the contract provisions setting forth dual obligations of appellant to pay child support to Mrs. Nolan until the children reached 21 and to contribute to their college education to the extent his financial circumstances permit.... The court further reviewed the communications between the parties, including Mrs. Nolan's reminder to appellant after the suspension of payments in 1983-84 that the agreement did not contemplate such offsets and that she expected payments to resume to her after David stopped living with his father. Perhaps most significantly, the court found Mrs. Nolan's explanation at trial that she was concerned with the immediate family needs to be a credible explanation for why her letters [of June 1985 and May 1986] demanded support only for the summer months and not for the preceding school year. Mrs. Nolan had testified that at the time of the May 16, 1986 letter, for example, she was out of a job because the funding on which her job as teacher in a correctional institution depended had expired, so that my whole focus ... was on the immediate crisis that I faced as my children came home. As an appellate court, it is not our function to weigh the plausibility of this explanation for Mrs. Nolan's conduct. We may not set aside the trial judge's decision to credit her testimony that she did not intend to relinquish her rights under the original agreement unless we are left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed. Cahn v. Antioch Univ., 482 A.2d 120, 128 (D.C.1984), quoting Zenith Radio Corp. v. Hazeltine Research, Inc., 395 U.S. 100, 123, 89 S.Ct. 1562, 1576, 23 L.Ed.2d 129 (1969). On the record considered by the trial court, we do not have that conviction. Appellant bore the burden of proof that Mrs. Nolan had surrendered her right to receive child support payments  payments which the agreement obliged Mr. Nolan to make in addition to such contributions for college as he could afford. A conclusion that he had not met that burden is, on the record examined by the trial court, not clearly erroneous.