I have joint custody with my ex-husband, but he can’t pay anything. He has no income and will likely not have any income of any kind until he’s old enough to retire and collect SS. He could probably qualify for disability, because he has a debilitating skin condition (the same kind of psoriasis that led to author Dennis Potter’s death) and some very serious mental health issues.
Most of the divorced folks I know are functional in their relationship and the kids don’t suffer, but the ones with vengeful exes! Holy cow.
That’s a complicated issue. Sometimes, I can see the other side. Right now we could borrow more money and have kid 1 go to a private school but we decided not to. However if kid lived with me and dad was the NCP (makes a lot more than me) I can see us (mom and kid 1) get a little miffed that dad would not be on board to borrow to help his kid. I think now that we live together and we share all money I see the situation different because anyway all our money go to our kids on way or another. But if we were divorced I think I would be more suspicious on why he would make certain decisions. Please do not take my post as sympathizing with the non supporting NCP. More like there is a lot of gray area, hard to navigate in the situation of a divorce.
Many adults genuinely feel contributing toward college costs is an option, not a mandate. Not paying for college isn’t what makes them a good parent or not (even though I firmly believe we should do all we can.) It’s hard to sort out what realities another family goes through.
And not caring, not having a relationship because there’s a “replacement” family or anger issues, is cruel. I always hope those first kids are able to find the support they need from other relatives, family friends or mentors.
Btw, just being QB doesn’t always equal desperately low income. There are several programs.
Surely there are gray areas. But if you have a NCP with disposable income who simply turns away from a reasonable request for college money for their child, I can see that leading to a lifetime of alienation. It boggles my mind to imagine deliberately distancing myself from a child. Many NCPs are simply “done” when the child turns 18. Why throw away something so precious?
Sometimes the NCP is treated like an ATM, that he/she is expected to pay but has no input into the decision or the raising of the child. The child support is paid, but NCP doesn’t get to participate in the sports, the prom pictures, the vacations, and certainly doesn’t get a say in which colleges the child applied to. Children cost a lot of money but most of us think they are worth it because we are getting something out of it - love, experiences, family. What if you are getting nothing through no fault of your own?
If may or may not be the child’s fault that there is no contact with the NCP (I’ve seen many teens refuse to go to visitation), but there is a point when the NCP may have had enough paying, may have put in the effort and had no return.
I’m divorced. Many of my friends are divorced. I’m the only one who got my ex to pay half of college. I fought hard for it in the divorce decree, got it, and then my ex-H still tried to get out of it.I had to threaten to go to court to enforce the agreement. It helped that my ex does love our offspring who didn’t buy his excuses.
I’ve never met a divorced (or never married) man who had a lousy relationship with his kids who didn’t blame their mom. IME, in 99% of cases, that’s hogwash. It gets pretty comical at times. A family court judge wrote in his opinion about a friend’s exH, “In all my years as a family court judge, I’ve never met a man who professed his love for his children so adamantly or who engaged in as much financial subterfuge to avoid supporting them.” Another friend’s ex moved to a foreign country that won’t enforce US child support orders to avoid paying. He came to his S’s wedding and gave a toast in which he said that the greatest loss in his life was the fact he’d had so little contact with his children while they were growing up because of the actions of other people, which everyone knew meant his wife.
@twoinandone, the custodial parent doesn’t get to say that (s)he isn’t getting enough out of a relationship with her/his child and just walk away. Why should a NCP be able to do that?
Many of these children could be a product of a 'hook up" vs a relationship. I had an employee once be garnished for 8 children with 7 different women. He couldn’t even name the 8 kids.
If they don’t care enough to have any kind of relationship for the first 18 years why on earth do you think they’d be willing to fork over money after age 18?
Regardless of whether a NCP spends time with or professes to love or care for the child as much as the CP, money becomes a weapon between acrimonious ex-spouses. It’s one way to keep “score” when all else fails.
My cousin’s ex-husband wields his money as a source of power over his ex-wife. Before the past college application season, he told his child that he would only foot the bill for the in-state flagship. My cousin knows there is a large trust fund established for their children’s educations but she is forbidden from knowing the terms of the trust and its assets. I don’t know how she agreed to this in their divorce.
Regardless, she was forced to advise her daughter about where she could apply to school, proceeding only with the vague knowledge that the father was (probably) making empty threats. According to my cousin, he is a multi-millionaire and owns a large primary home and lakefront retreat. With his financials, there is no way the daughter would receive FA, but my cousin proceeded as though there would be no financial support forthcoming. I can only imagine the implied message their daughter took from this ordeal.
He is well-known in his local community but no one would ever suspect that he engages in abusive tactics.
A friend of mine’s father ceased to pay her college expenses mid-stream because she refused to testify against her mentally fragile mother in their divorce.
@twoinandone, the custodial parent doesn’t get to say that (s)he isn’t getting enough out of a relationship with her/his child and just walk away. Why should a NCP be able to do that?
Of course they (I) can. I have no legal obligation to pay for my children now that they are 18. Only a few states require parents to support children once they are 18, except in the case of a divorce. Why should it be different for child of divorce? My state says it shouldn’t, so at 18 the parents are allowed to stop supporting the child (who is an adult). College, clothing, housing is all optional. I can send them off to make it in the world on their own. I choose not to do that, but I do have every right to do that.
Custodial parents don’t have the option of refusing to help their kids. If the NCP refuses to help with college expenses the custodial parents end up taking responsibility sometimes making it very difficult to make ends meet. We are in the situation where ncp contributes nothing and now wants to be off the hook for health insurance. Any bills he gets he forwards to me or if they are in his name they go to collections. We could only apply to fafsa only schools because he wouldn’t provide his info for the css profile. I may have to pay tuition with retirement funds in the future. If he cancel child’s health insurance then we have to figure out something. Meanwhile he goes on with life as if he doesn’t have a child. I wouldn’ send the child to go live on the streets no matter how tough things were.I would never think of this as an option.
“there is a point when the NCP may have had enough paying, may have put in the effort and had no return.”
Some NCPs believe that benefiting their child’s future IS a return. Not everyone.
I’m a lot more concerned about the parents who don’t pay child support than the ones who don’t pay for college. I mean, education is terrific, but clothing, food, and shelter are more important. I’ll never understand the people who walk away from their kids. I mean, I can’t even conceive of walking away from my nieces and nephews; if they were my OWN children? I can’t ever wrap my head around it, even though it happens all the time.
I phrased that incorrectly. I meant that a custodial parent can’t just walk away from a minor with “issues,” as many NCPs do. Yes, in some states, all parents have the right to walk away at 18, no matter what. (However, the majority of states impose some restrictions on that right. For example, in some states, parents still have an obligation to support an 18 year old who is a senior in high school and about ready to graduate. In some states, parents have a legal obligation to support an adult child who is incapable of working due to reasons of disease or mental incapacity. )
I was reacting to this:
This implied to me that you think the NCP has a greater right than the custodial parent does to walk away because he didn’t get a “return” from the relationship. There are many situations in which a custodial parent isn’t getting much “return” either, but we don’t say to them “As long as you give your child $X a month, you have no other responsibilities to him.”
BTW, no child has a right to “refuse” visitation without the NCP’s consent. Any NCP who wants to enforce his/her visitation rights can go to court and enforce the agreement. Maybe it’s just the judges I and my friends had, but any custodial parent who allowed the kid to stay at the custodial parent’s home during time the NCP had visitation rights would have found himself/herself in contempt of court.
Years ago an ex-husband had shot his ex-wife and her lawyer. In a courtroom (long ago, before the days of scanners). Right in front of the judge. He’d just had it. He felt he’d been screwed enough and just was done. Why did he have a gun? He was a deputy sheriff and had been at work. I was not in the least bit surprised. I had seen this anger and desperation in court a few times. The Friday before Christmas is a special day in domestic relations courts, as the judge gets to spend all day issuing orders about how the holidays will be divided, what the kids will EAT when with the different parent, what they will wear, if their hair will be cut (and even who will cut it). The parents cannot agree on anything. As the kids get older, they just want the fighting to stop, so if dad walking away will make it stop, then the kid will refuse to visit. The parents are not rational anymore so trying to say what we would do, what rational people would do, doesn’t work.
A friend of mine married a guy who hadn’t told her that he had been married before and had a child. Once she found out, she insisted that they pay child support and SHE set it up. Her H’s excuse was some BS story about his exwife…“oh the pain of the divorce was too much for me to pay child support or see my son.” oh yes…lol.
Well, when friend’s H left her and then later married another woman and had ANOTHER child, of course he didn’t want to pay CS for their 2 kids or his child with the first wife.
the 3rd wife knew nothing about Wife #1 until after her H left her for another woman. At that point, there were 4 kids with no NCP paying.
The ex-wives all got together and quickly learned that they were all pretty nice women who had fallen for a very good-looking narcissist.
I would advise divorcing parents to consider setting up a separate account to pay for their kids’ expenses. When my girlfriend got divorced she insisted on setting some money aside to pay for their young adult kids’(college age) expenses. They use the money to pay for kids’ travel to visit parents, allowance, college tuition, clothing, getting the first apartment, vacation, summer program…etc. In their case, money set aside was in the 7 figures. My GF said it alleviates the need to have to get the other parent’s permission on how much to spend and asking for additional money. Both parents are happy to know the money can only be use for their kids, and no matter what happens to them financially their kids are taken care of.
There is at least one semi-regular poster who posts about his story as the NCP, saying that he spent a lot of money just to fight legal battles with the CP who was trying to prevent him from having any contact with their kid.