I think it’s time to say to the student, ‘Hey, be thankful you have parents who can pay for you to attend college. Here’s the budget. Here are a list of schools in the budget. Pick one. Don’t judge your parents on how much they love you by how much we can afford for a school.’
I don’t think there is anything wrong with any parent whether divorced, single, remarried, never married to decide what is affordable and what isn’t for him/her. The children and exes can disagree. They can believe they deserve to go to Yale, that all their friends got to go to any college they wanted too, and that might be true. Too bad. Some parents with large retirement funds or savings got there by saving their money, not always buying the biggest house or most expensive room at the resort or eating at Ruth’s Chris instead of the Outback. Many parents are capable of weighing the value of any purchase, including college. People don’t go shopping for houses saying “I’ll pay whatever it costs” but rather “I have $300k, show me houses in that price range.” It is okay for parent to do the same with college, “I’ll pay $xx, find a school that works for that.” If the student insists on something that costs more, it’s likely that student will end up with no school.
My kids don’t have a second parent, so no one else to look to for extra money. They’d love it if someone would agree to pay for a portion of an inexpensive state school. They also know (knew) that even if the school thought an EFC of $30-40k was do-able for our family, I had veto power because I knew I couldn’t afford it, much like I couldn’t afford the mortgage I was approved for 20 years ago so I found a house at about 2/3 of the approved amount because, while the mortgage company didn’t care if I wouldn’t be able to afford retirement and toothpaste if I borrowed the full approved mortgage amount, I cared.
FCCDad, you say your obligations to your daughter are over (and I agree with you, you should get the option to be done legally) but that if she got into a better college, you’d pay more. Why? Is she not the same kid, and either your moral obligation or not, whether she goes to Old Dominion or Yale? Does your moral obligation change somehow because you think the college is more prestigious? That I don’t understand. State your position: “I can pay this much for college; if you go to a Virginia school and I can claim you as a dependent, that amount will allow you to go to UVa, VaTech, W&M. If you don’t go to school in Va or I can’t claim you as a dependent, you still have $xx. That’s it.” I’d leave your wife’s job situation out of it. If you later can provide more, great, but right now you can provide $xx.
She’s lucky she has great choices but my position would be the same no matter what state you lived in. $xx is available, and that’s it. Where you set that $xx is up to you, but certainly that amount it would cost you for 1/2 or 3/4 of instate tuition is more than reasonable, or the child support amount.