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<p>Then what was the point of the divorce agreement in the first place? According to this logic, the minute the husband’s exact circumstances change, the entire divorce agreement is out the window, as it is no longer applicable.</p>
<p>I also don’t understand why the son can apparently demand half of a state school’s costs. Why not half of a community college or trade school costs? What if the husband’s circumstances are bad enough that he decides that he can’t pay anything at all?</p>
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Here’s how the profile schools do it (or at least how my d’s school handled it). They run a FAFSA calculation separately for each parent, as if that that parent were the custodial parent. Then they add those number together. </p>
<p>So if one parent’s EFC came out to $20,000 and the other parent’s EFC came out to $10,000 – they’d figure an EFC of $30,000. The financial aid dept won’t discuss the specifics of the calculation with the parents, ostensibly in order to protect each parent’s financial privacy … but that is basically what they are doing, and one way that a divorced parent can figure out their ballpark EFC at a Profile school.</p>
<p>Obviously, a court could elect to do the same – but certainly it doesn’t have to.</p>
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<p>What the COURT does doesn’t matter at ALL to the college. All the college cares about is that the bills get paid. They don’t care at all who pays them.</p>
<p>OP hasn’t been back in awhile…she didn’t guise her name much, so really hope her SS didn’t see all her posts. Maybe the BM has, can’t imagine what ‘conversations’ have ensued as a result on their homefront…</p>
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<p>Yup, that’s the bottom line…colleges don’t want to get into whose not paying his or her fair share. Just give us the money when it’s due.</p>
<p>“Or maybe it’s that neither divorcing parent ever expected to be so wealthy as to make paying full freight at a $50,000-per-year college remotely possible.”</p>
<p>^^ I think you hit the nail on the head; too bad the language in the divorce settlement wasn’t clearer in terms of at least a ball-park figure.</p>
<p>Actually, we don’t know what the divorce settlement said.</p>
<p>I actually think it highly unlikely that the parties were factoring need-based financial aid into the picture at the time of divorce. People don’t just think that way – that is, you don’t “plan” for college expenses 5 or 10 or 15 years down the line, thinking, “no problem, we’ll just get financial aid.” – at least not unless they are terribly naive about the financial aid system and also have a “plan” in place to stay poor as long as possible, which is unlikely.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be “poor” to not be able to afford a $50,000-per-year college. Only the very wealthy can attend such a school without serious financial aid. Middle-class families don’t plan to spend $200,000 on a single child’s college education. It’s not even in the conversation.</p>
<p>But anyone who counts on need-based financial aid to pay for college is simply naive. The vast majority of colleges do NOT promise to meet full need of their students. </p>
<p>I seriously doubt that a divorcing couple who agreed to split everything 50/50 were thinking about the financial aid system. It sounds more like the type of agreement people make on principal – otherwise, they would have made a different agreement as to child support as well, given that one parent or another was bound to be in position where they could afford to contribute a larger percentage of the share of support. </p>
<p>It is very possible that they didn’t contemplate a private education at the time. But again, the mother is the one who now has the burden of collecting whatever the father is unwilling to pay.</p>
<p>Hat, I think the answer to your question is in the details. I would think the judge would look at the wording of the agreement, the entire agreement and the reasonable expectations of the family. I would expect a judge could rule differently if dad is, for example, a manager in an auto parts store than a classics PhD from U Chicago-- both of whom may, in fact, have the same EFC. </p>
<p>“Middle-class families don’t plan to spend $200,000 on a single child’s college education. It’s not even in the conversation.” </p>
<p>Polarscribe, it depends on the family. I know of a family that came as immigrants with small children, lived on one very middle class salary (the dad was an engineer) and saved, saved, saved. They lived in a working class neighborhood, never bought a house, packed sandwiches instead of stopping at McDs, went to the laundromat, etc. They paid for private colleges (1 ivy) for both their kids out of pocket, without even loans. Why? Because they didn’t even know financial aid existed and figured that, if it did, it was for the very poor, not for them who were middle class. But that was that family’s expectation and the kids knew that from the time they were little. Fwiw, the kids are now a doctor and dentist.</p>
<p>Wow, some of the thinking here is surprising. A judge might impute ability to pay for college by looking at profession rather than income? A judge may expect a middle class family with 4 kids to pay for pricy privates?</p>
<p>A judge might impute ability to pay for college by looking at profession rather than income?</p>
<p>Absolutely…</p>
<p>A judge could easily deduce that a college professor always expected his kids to go to college, while an uneducated person with a similar income might not.</p>
<p>*After all, if the dad had been unemployed for the last 2 years (like many people in this economy), how could he be held to any 50% rule. </p>
<p>Then what was the point of the divorce agreement in the first place? According to this logic, the minute the husband’s exact circumstances change, the entire divorce agreement is out the window, as it is no longer applicable.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>It doesn’t mean that the whole divorce agreement is out the window. Changes in circumstances do cause later changes to divorce decrees. For instance, if the Custodial Parent becomes gravely ill (too ill to care for the child) then “custody” gets revisited. </p>
<p>And, yes, if the dad had recently been thru a long term period of unemployment and could only contribute half the costs of a state school, I think a judge would consider that as appropriate. </p>
<p>I think at some point, a judge would realize that a rich exwife demanding that the “much lower income bio-dad” pay half of pricey private (instead of reasonable instate public) is really just getting her “jollies” and the issue isn’t really about providing a college education.</p>
<p>That said…I do have a problem with any parent who promises to help pay for college or whatever, but then goes forward and has more children with a new wife - which means affording to pay for college because almost impossible.</p>
<p>Let’s keep in mind DS may not even get into the state flagship. We’re talking #47 on the LAC list, not Harvard! Hard to believe many judges would see investing $200K in a non top school as reasonable. There might be more sympathy if this was a kid who worked his butt off for a top college.</p>
<p>* I’d say the second wives’ issues stem from the fact that she doesn’t have a job and is going to have to get one, now.*</p>
<p>That could also be true.</p>
<p>Re…the issue that CSS schools take the EFC of each parent and then add it together as one number to “protect privacy” is so silly.</p>
<p>If I were divorced, and I had a lowish income and could independently figure out that my income/assets would mean a low “family contribution” (especially at an ivy or other generous school). But, then, if the “family contribution” comes back as “full freight”, I may not know what the “other” family’s income is, but it would be rather obvious that the other family has a very high income. So, adding the amounts together to make one big “family contribution” doesn’t really keep much “secret.”</p>
<p>To then expect 2 families to “hash it out” to decide how much each will pay without revealing each family’s income is a bit silly. That’s why I think each family should be given their own “family contribution.”</p>