Help for student abandoned by his family

[IxnayBob]

@Twoinanddone

In a very few cases, parents can be court ordered to pay SOME college expenses for instate in NJ. Part of this thread was that the student was at an OOS school so even if they are from NJ, no one is going to order them to pay OOS tuition.

Being somewhat nit-picky, but the parent might be ordered to pay OOS tuition, I.e., tuition to an OOS school, but not at levels greater than an in-state public school. This is known as “the Rutgers Rule.” The Rutgers Rule is also applied when the school attended is a private school.

The requirement to pay even extends beyond UG:

In New Jersey the duty to pay for a child’s college expenses extends beyond college, to graduate and professional school. In the case of Ross v. Ross, 167 N.J. Super. 491 (Ch. Div. 1979), the court held that a parent has a responsibility to pay for a child’s graduate and/or professional school. In the Ross case, the court found a 23-year daughter not to be emancipated until her law school training ended and required the father to continue to pay child support for her.

For the record, I learned this when considering filing suit to have my ex-wife pay some share of my oldest child’s college expense, but decided against pursuing it. In our case, it was BC, and we lived in NJ.