Divorce Lawyer: Divorce & College May Not Mix

What happens when either spouse requests that the marriage end and one of your children is in or set to go off to college? Recent reports have suggested that students whose parents are no longer married have more financial burden than those students whose parents are still together. This is almost to be expected as it can be more strenuous to maintain separate households than it can for the parties to live together. Perhaps more profound of a reason for this is that, after a marriage fizzles, each side may go off in their own direction, resulting in less of a concentrated focus on what the spouse have together, namely their children. Here are some additional legal problems with funding college for former spouse’s children of which a divorce lawyer should be aware.

The most glaring issue is that child support may not extend past eighteen years old. On occasion, there are child support awards that are considered “in globo,” which may make it possible for the child support to continue until the last child turns eighteen. An “in globo” award is generally considered one where the support is not set and paid one child at a time; rather it is where the court awards one award for all of the children. But even these awards generally do not include child tuition or expenses for college, and mean that the children must go individually to their parents requesting money, relying on their natural sense of obligation to continue to help support them absent legal compulsion. The result is that a divorce lawyer is generally powerless to help make sure that your child receives sufficient funding in order to receive an education most likely to lead to a good job.

Also, almost no spouse likes paying child support because they typically suspect that the spouse who is receiving the support is spending it on themselves and not on their children. This means that by the time that by the time the spouse no longer has to pay, they are typically eager to stop paying.

The result of all of this is that children’s advanced education could be deeply impacted by a breakup, and there probably is not much that a divorce lawyer can do to stop it. According to recent studies, regardless of parent’s income, students whose parents are no longer together can expect to be responsible for a significant amount more of their tuition expenses in college.

While this is certainly not a good position for your college bound children to be in, if you are aware of this potential problem, you can probably do more to help mitigate any negative effects. This is because you can begin to save more money yourself for you children’s college funds, expecting that the other parent will not help to contribute as they should. Moreover, it is not usually difficult for students to take out government backed loans to help them defer the expenses. But in the end, it does probably mean that your children will be looking to go to less expense colleges and universities to complete their education, and this should be good to help make sure that your children are still able to advance with the best career possible for them.

The above material is intended for information purposes only. It is not intended as professional legal advice and should not be construed as such. Attorney William H. Beaumont practices in New Orleans, La.