Alabama’s Family-Centered Take On Divorced Parents Paying For Their Children’s College

The skyrocketing cost of college puts everyone in a bad mood, from those who have never entertained thoughts of pursuing higher education to those who finished their entire degree and took a graduation trip on their parents’ dime without applying for a single penny of financial aid or taking out student loans.  Paying for college is uniquely painful, though, if the student’s parents are divorced.  Every year, the FAFSA form reopens old wounds, as students must indicate how much money they expect their parents to contribute toward their education.  Divorced parents’ values about money, employment, and education are often at odds.  Once the divorce is final and the kids are grown up, they are free to agree to disagree.  You can bust yourself at work and in the gig economy to help your kids repay their student loans and enjoy their daily recaps of their professors’ lectures, while your anti-intellectual ex grumbles that it was foolish for your kids to go to college in the first place.  Alabama offers a solution to this problem, so that young adults and their parents do not have to fight about it every year.  For help working out the details of responsibility for your children’s college tuition during divorce mediation, contact a Birmingham divorce lawyer.

College Tuition Does Not Have to Be a Battleground

According to Alabama law, post-minority educational support is when divorced parents sign a legally binding agreement outlining each parent’s contribution to their children’s college tuition and other postsecondary educational expenses.  It is not child support, which ends when a son or daughter turns 19 and graduates from high school, except in the case of adult sons and daughters who cannot become financially independent of their parents because of disabilities.  The child support amount is based on statewide guidelines.

As for post-minority educational support, it is a purely optional provision of the parents’ marital settlement agreement (MSA).  If the parties decide that they will pay for their children’s college expenses, they can memorialize this commitment in their MSA, which becomes a court order when the court finalizes the divorce.  This means that, if your ex does not live up to his or her end of the bargain, you can petition the court to enforce the order.

As of 2013, Alabama amended the law on post-minority educational support.  Under the new law, parents can agree to pay post-minority educational support pursuant to their MSA, but courts cannot order it except as a matter of enforcing the agreement that the parents have made.  In other words, it is you and your ex-spouse, not the court, that decides whether you will pay for your children’s college when they reach college age.

Contact Peeples Law About Paying Your Children’s College Expenses After Divorce

A Birmingham family law attorney can help you work out the provisions about college expenses in your marital settlement agreement.  Contact Peeples Law in Birmingham, Alabama today to schedule a consultation.

Source:

scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3198413818425978002&q=divorce+fire&hl=en&as_sdt=4,61,62,64&as_ylo=2015&as_yhi=2025