We don’t know that they weren’t. The loans were in her name, so they remain her responsibility no matter if she used the loans to pay for family expenses (which the child care would have been) or for education expenses. The court can’t order the lender to look only to the ex for payment of these loans, as they are in wife’s name. Maybe the court gave an equal amount of debt to the ex husband to pay off, or maybe the wife received more of the assets of the marriage (home equity, household goods). The wife may have received a higher child support award because she had a lot of debt but the truth is she signed the documents. It’s her debt…
The reality is that there was probably plenty of debt to share but not a lot of assets to split. He had student loans too, and his may have been used for family living expenses too.