Particularly in Massachusetts because I think every state has their own guidelines. Does anyone have experience with taking an ex or bio parent to court to help with college funding? Would love to hear your stories, good, bad and ugly.
You would enforce it (or try) just like every other provision of the court order. File a motion, set a hearing, and have the court rule whether he is in compliance or not.
The problem you may have is this is not a debt yet owned. For example, if it say he will pay $10k per year, he doesn’t owe that yet because your daughter hasn’t started school yet. You’d have to wait, and then that puts you in a bad spot because the tuition is actually due, plus the delay in enforcing it.
If the court order doesn’t call for him to pay for college and you are trying to get that provision added to an existing order, that is much more complicated. You would have to know if Mass law allows or requires NCP to pay for support after high school.
Biggest issue I have seen is that a decree specified that each parent would be responsible for half the tuition at our state flagship. However, tuition amounts to only 1/3 of the cost of attendance (COA), and I don’t think that the attorneys who were involved in drafting these orders considered that. (I believe that in Massachusetts the tuition is even lower as a percentage of COA.)
What is the court-order? What does it specify? What is the bio-dad now trying to do?
There is no court order for college expenses. In fact, it is what they call in Massachusetts a “silent” order which I wasn’t aware of until I got notice that child support would end at age 18 (last March). When I got that notice I called Department of Revenue (Child Support Enforcement) and because it is “silent” the existing support order is auto extended until age 21 or after four years of college at age 22. The existing order is based on income from 15 years ago (mine has only increased slightly, his probably about 50-70%). The existing order is child support, medical insurance and she is his dependent tax wise. He is in compliance with the order. It is a paternity order, never married, never together, but they do have a relationship.
Because his EFC is so high (mine is 5870, I’ve estimated his to be somewhere between $22 and $25K) most colleges are out of reach. Actually, they are all out of reach for me, even the ones that only require my FAFSA information. There are two options that would require student loans, both good options. He has not been forthcoming about what he was willing to contribute but has been encouraging D to apply to schools that I figured were in the $25K range. I have been trying to get him to commit to a dollar amount so not to waste our time but until a few hours ago, that didn’t happen.
He has decided to contribute $10K and wants me to match (or better) that amount and allow D to take full student loans. Her school of choice is coming out at $30K and, while she is disappointed because I told her it was off the table, he is encouraging her to use all her summer earnings, take out loans and insists? (well, he can’t really insist, can he?) that I match his $10K. Honestly, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t come up with that amount. My EFC is pretty accurate with what I can afford and that means giving up my car lease, downgrading to a used vehicle and putting my meager 40lK savings on hold. Not a problem. But, really? He (his household income in total) is at least four times mine AFTER his support payments. He keeps going back to the fact that he’s paying child support.
I’m really looking for experiences with the Massachusetts probate court sytem. Have others had any luck or if I decide to pursue a court decision might this bite me in the xxx in the long run?
I’m sorry that you are going through this. I hope you prevail.
Thank you ClassicRockerDad, the support means alot.
???
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There is no court order for college expenses. In fact, it is what they call in Massachusetts a "silent" order which I wasn't aware of until I got notice that child support would end at age 18 (last March). When I got that notice I called Department of Revenue (Child Support Enforcement) and because it is "silent" the existing support order is auto extended until age 21 or after four years of college at age 22. The existing order is based on income from 15 years ago (mine has only increased slightly, his probably about 50-70%). The existing order is child support, medical insurance and she is his dependent tax wise. He is in compliance with the order. It is a paternity order, never married, never together, but they do have a relationship. <<<
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I’m confused. Will he be ordered to pay child support until she’s 22? If so, how much is THAT per month?
Are you saying that he’s agreeing to pay $10k per year PLUS monthly child support? If so, how much is all of that?
I think you are correct that fighting it in court might backfire. IIRC, your daughter has been accepted to a state school with pretty good merit, so his $10k would be much more than 1/2 college costs, and he might get to drop child support since his half of tuition would be more than half her support. I do get his reasoning, that you pay 1/3, he pays 1/3 and the final 1/3 is borrowed or paid by daughter. He doesn’t understand that she’ll be limited in what she can borrow and that you can’t pay 1/3, but looked at from his point of view, it does seem fair.
The answer may be that your daughter can’t afford this school. Just because you think her father makes $100k (or more) doesn’t mean that he’s able to pay more than $10k either. He has a house, he has a car. Maybe he’s in big debt. Many kids go to their state schools because their parents can’t or won’t pay. You also do your daughter no favors by fighting it out this year and then having it be a fight every year. I know how hard it is, I had a parent agree to pay and then every semester it was a fight for the tuition, every month for the rent. There were a lot of months I just wanted to quit and get a job, stop fighting.
I really don’t think a court would require him to pay at all, but at most they’d require no more than half the state school tuition (and probably not room and board since he pays child support). Just a guess. I live in a state where child support stops at 18/high school grad, and court ordered college support has been out of the equation for more than 20 years, unless agreed to.
Thanks twoinanddone, that’s pretty much what I was thinking. The answer is that D cannot afford the school. I get that. I set a budget from the beginning. He is the one that has been telling her all along that she “deserves” to go to a top tier school. No one deserves what they cannot afford.
She does have good choices and I’ll like to see her make one that will not require a yearly fight. I do see his side. But I am also angry and frustrated that he has not saved a nickel for her education. I am angry and frustrated that he has had the ability to build his career to a point that he makes four times what I make (we made an agreement that I would be home for the bus everyday and not work nights). I am angry and frustrated that he will be able to retire from his federal position with a nice retirement fund, while I’m trying to put $25/week away in my 401K. He thinks the EFC is ridiculous because they aren’t counting his debt…I look at the brand new Landcruiser next to the classic Caddy next to the two Harleys in his house that is double the size of mine and think…we all make choices about how much debt we can/will accrue. He’s angry that I have no debt and feels I should take out loans ~ in his words “you have the borrowing power to pay for her to go to school, I don’t have any excess credit right now”.
Thanks for letting me vent. And for talking me off the ledge lol. This is going to be a very hard week for all of us. I want to come to an agreement that sticks for four years so the fighting doesn’t start up again every July. Wish me luck.
Definitely don’t use your retirement fund. You need those funds for you, for eventual emergencies…
You could choose between the cheaper options that you can afford half of and don’t require loans, and have him contribute to that - something that you could still afford somehow (by having your D take out loans for instance) a year from now if dad bails, if you think there’s a chance of that happening. Try to get him to maintain the 10k/yr towards the cheaper option.
So I reread your post NEPatsGirl, and again I sympathize. However, I think you should go along with his plan and let your daughter go to that $30K school. You haven’t said where it is, but from your other posts, it’s a small LAC, perhaps a women’s college in the 5-college area. I think those schools are terrific and we have friends and neighbors who are graduates and the educational environment was terrific.
For year one, you would only need to borrow (PLUS loan?) $4130 to get it up to 10K, and a little more. Have your D ask her father to co-sign some extra loans because his credit is better. I think it’s really possible the result is worth it. Also, if things get really bad a year or two down the road and she’s more comfortable transferring to UMASS, where she could probably continue to participate in her existing social life, then the amount borrowed up to that point is not fatal.
You are going to live a long time after she graduates and you need to give your D an answer now. Furthermore, being from a poor family myself, I know how much it sucks. Like I was, your D is hopefully motivated to study something where she can seriously earn money after graduation. The amount of money we’re talking about isn’t really that much for a working professional in something moderately lucrative. I think women’s colleges like Mt Holyoke or Smith do a terrific job in preparing women to earn. She won’t face the same issues that you faced.
I know what I’m proposing is risky and scary, and people will say that I love spending other people’s money. However, you only have one life, and so does your daughter, and the magnitude of this calculated risk seems potentially manageable for your D.
I’ll take the opposite tack from ClassicRocker (even though I also think the opportunities at a place like Smith are fantastic)-- I wouldn’t impoverish myself/take on more financial risk if depending on the credit-worthiness/trustworthiness/financial resources of a third party who seems to have demonstrated some issues with consumption in the past.
I know my own ability to generate income- even if my current job vanished tomorrow. I know my own capacity for knuckling down into the very, very frugal space which could be required. But I’m not betting on anyone else. The D’s bio dad could acquire a new wife and kids in six months; the bio dad could become disabled (and this mom has no clue what kind of disability insurance he has and what it might cover and how quickly it would kick in). And tragically- the dad could get hit by a bus next October, and the mom has no clue what provisions for the D have been made in his estate. You think it’s tough going to court to get added funds from the dad while he’s alive- try petitioning probate court if/once he’s dead when you’re duking it out with other heirs. And of course- his debts would get paid first if he died, so even if he’s planned for the D generously, the executor can’t distribute those funds while there are still tax liens or other on the estate.
Pats girl-- big hug to you. I think you are a phenomenal parent. But maybe it’s time to ratchet down the pressure you are putting on yourself here- both financially and emotionally- and moving to plan B or C which doesn’t require going to court with the bio dad???
It’s really a question of philosophy for life.
I’m generally a risk adverse person. No interest in skydiving (it’s not the fall, it’s the sudden stop).
However, I’ve studied enough math to know that there is risk in taking no risk.
I generally try to take calculated risks. I seriously ask the questions: What’s really the upside? What’s really the downside? What’s the most probable outcome, etc? How likely is a disastrous outcome. I try to assign probabilities.
We had kids while my wife was in grad school. Was it risky? Yes. But she didn’t have to interrupt a career, so the upside seemed huge. As it turns out, it was - two great kids and we’re young enough to enjoy the empty nester years together, and both of our careers turned out well.
Twenty something years ago, I saw that my company was paying a bounty to find referrals for people just like me. I had only moderate upside at this company. I had a wife in grad school, a baby girl and another one on the way. I met a former colleague at a conference who had recently left my company in the dead of winter to join a Bay Area startup, selling his recently purchased house at a loss. That company went IPO and I saw him 6 months later and he was really happy. Because of the bounty, I concluded that this was an excellent time for me to join a startup myself. I relocated my entire family to Boston even though I had a little baby and another on the way. Boston is expensive. My wife would finish her research remotely occasionally making a trip to see her advisor. The upside was life changing, the downside - I’d have to find another job which I didn’t think would be that hard. The most probable outcome - this company would be no worse off than my former company but we’d be living in Boston which is where we wanted to live anyway. The company went public about 18 months later, and during the boom years, I made a good bit of money.
Was it risky? Yes. But I wouldn’t have been happy without taking such a risk. Was it reckless? I would argue no.
Of course we bought a nice house without stretching, but most of it we invested in the market. We kept on buying right through the 2008 crash.
We’re now in our 50s at about 75% stock in our investment portfolios (which doesn’t count our house). Is it risky? Yeah probably. The alternative? Very low returns. We still have many more years to work before retirement. CALCULATED risk is the key.
I look back and think about risky decisions that we made. Most were good, some were bad. I don’t think that we’d be anywhere near as wealthy today without those risks. I think it’s important that kids learn how to take them.
Classic- your story is lovely but the inherent stability of a two wage earning family with very young kids (which is when you took on your big upside financial risks) can’t compare with the stability of a single parent mom who does not have the luxury of a spouse’s income or her peak earning years in front of her to compensate for a mis-step.
You are being a little callous in assuming that a (presumably) middle aged woman has the same ability to correct for a mistake that you had at the beginning of your career. Or that her investment portfolio has time to recover.
I’m assuming that the DAUGHTER has just such an ability and will make sure that her mom is made whole. The risk is whether the daughter will come through. Also the risk isn’t huge.
You are right in many aspects, but I think it’s worth asking the question and playing devil’s advocate. This is a hard one in my opinion, but also time critical. Probably no time to get a judgement.
I sympathize, NEPatsGirl, but I agree with blossom about going forward with a plan that doesn’t require going to court.
I wouldn’t let your daughter’s dad decide for you how to spend your money. I’d add up whatever you’re getting in child support, add the federal student loans to that, and tell your daughter that’s how much money she has to work with so she can pick a school that will be affordable all 4 years. I wouldn’t take out loans, or quit putting money into your 401k, or depend on your daughter’s dad to pay any more than he is currently paying. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with living within your means.
NEPatsgirl I’m so sorry you are having to go through this. I really hope it works out for your D to attend the LAC. If it is one of the 5 colleges, CRD has a good point that if she needed to transfer to UMass later for financial reasons, she’d still be able to retain some of the positives of having attended one of the women’s schools: she can keep her friends, still take classes there, and probably still have access to the alumni networking and retain relationships with professors. (I personally think the ability to forge the kind of close, personal relationships with professors who care is a HUGE plus at those schools.)
But did she get merit? If she started at the more expensive school and later had to transfer, would she get the same, any merit as a transfer? I agree it would be best to go by what you can afford since you don’t know for sure if you can depend on dad to contribute and how much all 4 years. His priorities seem to be different than yours, you are willing to sacrifice to come up with the EFC, but what about him?
Thanks everyone for your support and advice. Now that I’m over the “court thing”, yeah, not a great idea…after 15 years of co-parenting, this isn’t the time to go down that road. Looking back, I made some serious mistakes: not going back for an increase as his income grew because I didn’t want to make waves and honestly I felt he was paying his share, not putting more energy into building a career so when this time came I’d have something to fall back on (not to mention more $$ in retirement which is embarrassingly light), etc. but that’s all water over the bridge now.
I think I should be more transparent in this thread. As many have surmised, the school is Smith College. D was waitlisted at nearly every top tier and top 20 LAC that she applied to, something we did not expect. That alone took her top choices out of the mix, leaving her with many safety schools and a few more select schools. She is an early-write at Smith and a STRIDE scholar. She was also accepted into the UMAmherst Commonwealth Honors program and last night was accepted into the BioTap program there. UMA was last on her list (mostly due to size). She applied to 19 schools, chasing merit and got very good aid at alot of schools but it came down to about 6 in the end. We waited until last week for the Smith finaid package, which came out at $30K, the highest of the schools we whittled the list to. The big surprise was Skidmore who gave her a full tuition scholarship (not room and board).
We’re headed to see Skidmore tomorrow. She really liked it when she went last year but since then she has researched their science department and is very unsure that it will meet her needs. For whatever reason, there is no excitement, I wish there were. The price is right. The price is also right at UMAmherst.
So, since I have a lot of the CC heavy hitters here, is Smith worth the extra $18K/year ($72,000 total plus what I expect to be at least $10,000 in increases if the past years are any example). Debt would be the full $28K for D. The first year would be doable, but with increases I’m very afraid it will become cost-prohibitive at some point. I was out of the country last week when the package came in and assumed between she and her father they would appeal but that didn’t happen.
She has also put a safety school, UScranton, back on her end list. Price there is $24K but they are reassessing the package for me. They have the exact major she wanted, Forensic Chemistry/Criminology, and from all accounts have a good science department, but that’s alot of mullah for a safety school I think, and one that requires airfare or a very long bus ride…
So, the age-old CC question: just how much is a more selective college worth? Is Smith worth $80K more than Skidmore given that she intends to be a biochem/math and/or computer science major with a minor in Latin American Culture?