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[QUOTE]
A judge, turning to a New Jersey legal precedent known as 'Newburgh' that says divorced parents may be required to contribute to their children's education, no matter their age.</p>
<p>The judge ruled in Caitlyn's case her parents have to pay $16,000 this year.</p>
<p>"The law in New Jersey is so clear. It is cut and dry. The law says parents are supposed to contribute to their children's post-secondary expenses," said Rochester.</p>
<p>Maura and Michael say they were willing to pay for her education in state, in New Jersey, if she followed rules and lived at home.
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<p>The daughter is 21 and is estranged from both parents and living w grandparent. Daughter wants to go to Temple, OOS.</p>
<p>Interesting this Newburgh law only applies to divorced parents. After seeing some very rancorous divorces with friends my DW told me she would never divorce me. She’d kill me instead. Less paperwork. :)</p>
<p>My grandmother used to say, “Divorce? Never! Murder? Maybe.”</p>
<p>I think as long as we are going to take the position that a person is a dependent for the purposes of financial aid until they are 24, we are going to have to take the position that parents have to pay for college. The beast must be fed.</p>
But the law doesn’t compel married parents to pay, as we’ve witnessed in many CC threads where kids complain that their well off parents won’t pay. </p>
<p>And if divorced parents are in the hook, then what are the limits in terms of the cost of the school? The way the NJ law is written suggests divorced parents could be on the hook for college tuition for their 40 year old offspring. </p>
<p>Couldn’t find the actual law, based on this blogpost, it looks as if the intent was to ensure that one of the divorced parents couldn’t gambit by saying “I’m not paying” to force the other parent to pay where the ordinal ranking of preference is ex-spouse pays is better than split cost is better than no one pays. More detail is given to the other aspects in play, you can just read it.</p>
<p>Good find, and an interesting read. My request of GMTplus7 was based on his/her statement that “[t]he way the NJ law is written suggests divorced parents could be on the hook for college tuition for their 40 year old offspring.” I’m curious where that came from.</p>
<p>It’s complete nonsense and another sign of horrendous meddling by the family courts in New Jersey. Earnest parents will help their college-student parents the best they can, but I’m sorry I have a friend whom has confronted this situation in New Jersey and it is clear to me the his parent has been victimized by an vindictive ex-spouse and lazy judges. Either you’re an adult when you’re 21 you or not. You are and thus you should be independent, like the children of married couples are.</p>
<p>For the purposes of financial aid in this country, you are not an adult until you are 24. I’m not sure this is actually 'right," but it is the way it is.</p>
<p>Press reports on court cases are often wildly misleading.</p>
<p>There’s a recent case that’s actually reported - Black v. Black - which walks through the issues under New Jersey law. It’s only a Superior Court decision, but it’s been discussed a fair amount.</p>
<p>Interesting. The judge in Black v. Black made the father’s contribution toward college expenses for his estranged son conditional on the son’s participation in a minimum of five joint counseling sessions with his father. The father was and had been willing to try joint counseling in an attempt to repair his relationship with his son, but the son had steadfastly refused to do so, and for a period of years had refused all contact with his father.</p>
<p>From the opinion:</p>
<p>“After observing and listening to both sides testify in court, however, a reasonable layperson could fairly conclude that father and son each have a stubborn streak in their personalities. In this respect, the apple may not have fallen far from the tree.”</p>
<p>A very smart judge and a well-written opinion. I wonder how things turned out.</p>
<p>I saw this story on GMA this morning, and the comments the cohosts made about it were off the mark, IMHO. The consensus seemed to be that they thought the parents owed it to the daughter. My belief is that the parents do have the responsibility to pay for college before the taxpayers should be on the hook; this is the premise of the EFC. That said, I also believe that the parents have the absolute right to determine what they can/cannot pay for college, as where as which colleges they will/will not pay for. The parents didn’t say they would not pay for college - just that they wouldn’t pay for that college. The young woman might have to attend a CC or a stay-at-home school … she would survive, as so many have done and continue to do. She just can’t be the one telling her parents what they have to do with their money. What a slippery slope.</p>
<p>I want them to rule on why divorced parents have to pay and married parents do not. How about someone with never married parents? Or one parent living?</p>
<p>The parents did try to emancipate her against her will, and failed.</p>
<p>Very bad precedent. Then again, in NJ they found a lady not guilty of killing her son because she was depressed at the time…</p>
<p>The concept that divorced parents can be compelled to pay for their kids’ college, while married parents cannot, has a long history.</p>
<p>My parents divorced in 1965. Their divorce agreement specified that the custodial parent (my mother) would determine what sort of higher education was appropriate for each of their two children and that each parent was obligated to fund half the cost. This was a legally binding document. They had to cough up the money somehow (or borrow it).</p>
<p>If they had been married to each other, they wouldn’t have been required to pay a dime of my college costs or my sister’s (although they probably would have paid anyway because they greatly valued higher education).</p>
<p>My divorce agreement says we will share the costs of college, but since he’s unemployed and has some fairly serious mental health issues that prevent him from working, it’s all on my shoulders. I’ll do the best I can. </p>
<p>I think this makes sense. As long as custodial status doesn’t exempt the income of the non-custodial parent from being considered on financial aid, it is only right the parent is called to finance the kid.</p>
<p>The reason the court can get involved in a divorce situation and not (at least to the extent of college tuition) for married people is that the couple ASKED the court to get involved when they filed the divorce petition. Courts don’t tell married people how to manage their money (until they fail to pay a bill and the creditor sues), what to feed their kids, how much to spend on food, housing, etc., but when they file that divorce petition, then involved the courts do get.</p>
<p>This, however, is not a good precedent. There is no indication that either parent has this amount of money to spend on an education and that the parents just aren’t willing to pay. Normally it is one (wealthier) parent who is unwilling to pay and the other decision making parent who wants the child to have an expensive education and wants the other parent to pay. If Donald Trump was saying that community college was ‘good enough’ and Ivanka wanted the children to go to Penn, the court would be justified in ordering the payment as part of the overall divorce settlement.</p>
<p>My understanding is as someone posted above, that in a divorce each parent is responsible for half the cost of tuition at a State U (Rutgers). The $16K seems a little high for that. The law was designed so that one parent could not refuse to pay and require the other parent to shoulder the full cost of college. It is interesting, though, that in this case the kid is using it against BOTH parents, who are united in not wanting to pay this amount of money. It doesn’t seem fair to require parents to pay for college simply because they are divorced, but would not if still married. It will be interesting to see how the courts decide. </p>