The situation is that EFC is high, but ongoing legal fees don’t allow both currently divorcing parents to pay for college. Our son already took all the loans available at his school. Going into such big debt isn’t a good idea, nether for the kid, not for parents anyway. How do parents with high EFC and inability to pay solve this problem?
Go to an affordable school. It is well worth repeating ad nauseum that plenty of still married parents don’t pay $$ for university. It is also up to divorcing parents to choose to pay legal fees over their child’s tuition. They are quite possibly paying that divorce lawyer’s school loans. That is ironic. Maybe mediation?
Is kid at uni already? What year?
Parents with high EFCs very often don’t pay lots of tuition etc. Their kids get merit, and they choose affordable schools.
- Perhaps you need to love your kid(s) more than you hate your ex. While no one goes into marriage looking to get divorced, unfortunately marriages break up for any number of reasons. I am quite sure that it is a stressful situation for your family.
It looks like from what you have stated that the only “winners” in your divorce are the lawyers, who are getting the monies that you could use to pay for your son’s college. Unfortunately, the college is not going to give aid based on your high legal fees.
How do you solve the problem? Stop the bleeding. Come to an amicable agreement so you can stop paying lawyers and use the money toward college. Remember there are limits on what your son can borrow without a co-signer (you and/or your ex). Otherwise, you may have to pull your child from his current school to a more affordable option while living at home.
If you (the parents) are unable to stop spending what was probably originally intended to be the college money on lawyers (probably paying for the lawyers’ kids’ college costs), your son may have to drop out of the expensive college and transfer to a lower cost college.
Or drop out complete and go to work if there is no affordable college to transfer to. In this case, it may be possible to complete college later after aging into what the college sees as “independent from parents for financial aid purposes”. However, some colleges assume that a student who started as dependent for financial aid purposes will always be so; if that applies to his college, he may have to transfer to another college that offers sufficient financial aid and considers him independent of parents for financial aid purposes.
Go to an instate college.
Stop being baited into fees and meetings with your lawyer.
Compromise.
I don’t know much about divorce proceedings but I know that we had some financial issues on my DH’s side of his family. The family finally agreed to see an experienced planner and divided their assets fairly.
Go the financial planner, with your soon to be ex, and explain that you would rather have your division of property divided more for you than the attorney fees. They will probably charge you less than the attorneys.
One of my kids attended a college with good merit, partly because of divorce her senior year of HS and the other parent who wouldn’t contribute beyond existing savings (I paid what the savings didn’t cover). We were lucky to have some savings for college that didn’t get touched in the divorce, though,