We had neighbors a few years ago that were Mormon. One of the things they told me was that they believed that in a previous life they could have and probably did make contracts to sire a friend in their next life, as in "I'd like to be your son in our next lives." But the problem was that in this life, they had no idea how many contracts the husband and wife may have made. Therefore, they had as many children as they thought they needed to satisfy previous agreements, plus one.
Is this a typical Mormon belief or just something this family believed in?