It was a 529 to start with. We put it in my ex’s name at first as he direct deposited money into it from his paychecks. I would then pull money from my paychecks to add to it. We divorced on very good terms in the beginning so it was my fault for trusting that he would protect that money.
The shorter version is we had 50/50 split of the children and we shared all expenses. College is not specified on our court order. Recently my ex attempted to get full custody of the children and in the end the courts found him and his wife to be manipulative and using the children as pawns and took away placement time from him. I had to spend over 30K in lawyers fees to protect myself. But yes I am now getting a higher child support amount of which I am putting into a fund myself for my other two children.
I am very thankful that I have this potential benefit from my job however with the current financial state of some of these private colleges I am a bit fearful the benefit won’t be around or it will be much less than it used to be.