There is an interesting ruling out of New Jersey where a court has ruled that parents of an estranged adult daughter must pay for her college tuition. It is a ruling that runs against the traditional view that upon a child reaching the age of majority, parents are relieved of their mandatory financial obligations just as children are emancipated from their control. We discussed a prior case where a court ruled against such an adult daughter seeking tuition. However, Caitlyn Ricci has secured a ruling that her biological parents Michael Ricci and Maura McGarvey must pay the tuition even though she moved out of their home and has seen them for years — except in court.
The ruling requires the payment of $16,000 each year so Ricci, 21, can continue classes at Temple University in Philadelphia.
She brought the action when her parents were seeking an order to have their daughter declared emancipated from them. The parents say that their daughter moved out after refusing to follow their rules and went to live with her grandparents.
The Court relied on Newburgh v. Arrigo, 88 N.J. 529 (1982), where the state Supreme Court ruled divorced parents are responsible for providing for their child’s college education. In that case, the court concluded:
Generally parents are not under a duty to support children after the age of majority. Nonetheless, in appropriate circumstances, the privilege of parenthood carries with it the duty to assure a necessary education for children. Frequently, the issue of that duty arises in the context of a divorce or separation proceeding where a child, after attaining majority, seeks contribution from a non-custodial parent for the cost of a college education. In those cases, courts have treated “necessary education” as a flexible concept that can vary in different circumstances. . . .
In the past, a college education was reserved for the elite, but the vital impulse of egalitarianism has inspired the creation of a wide variety of educational institutions that provide post-secondary education for practically everyone. State, county and community colleges, as well as some private colleges and vocational schools provide educational opportunities at reasonable costs. Some parents cannot pay, some can pay in part, and still others can pay the entire cost of higher education for their children. In general, financially capable parents should contribute to the higher education of children who are qualified students. In appropriate circumstances, parental responsibility includes the duty to assure children of a college and even of a postgraduate education such as law school.
As an academic, much of that analysis resonates with me. I do believe that college is an important part of anyone’s life and that ideally it should be available to everyone. However, it is not a mandatory stage of education and is not required for the vast majority of positions. A recent study showed that only 2 out of 5 Americans have college degrees. That is actually a number on the rise, but we still lag behind other countries like Korea, Japan, Canada and Russia with more than 50 percent of their young people holding a degree beyond high school. It is a disappointing position since the United States is widely credited with inventing mass higher educational training. We are currently ranking 13th in the world. However, there is a great difference between a desire to increase higher education and making such education as requirement for parents in supporting adult children.
While Ricci’s parents were only married for two and a half years, it was enough to bind them for the tuition.
What do you think?
Source: ABC
The judgement is one thing, collecting is another.
If you can’t collect on time, no college.
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!
— Shakespeare’s King Lear
She need to meet Tim Tebow
Paul;
Make you a deal!
I’ll help you impeach 7 judges etc., – for doing improper;
for each one who has done contrary to law in my case
that you assist me with!
Laser – my friend, I only want to impeach one. 7 seems heavy handed. 🙂
The only way this makes sense if the court also requires the daughter to then support the parents through their retirement years………….beginning right the f@*& now!
If I was lawyer for the parents I would raise a jurisdictional issue in the case. The judge does not have jurisdiction over some claim from an adult that the natural parents owe the adult offspring something of value. No one died so it is not inheritance by a Will, a Trust or intestacy. I would interpose the 26th Amendment (granting 18 year olds the right to vote) and other positive law provisions. The only way this comes up is if there is a divorce and one or the other had a duty under a divorce decree agreed to by the parties or by a pre nuptial agreement between the parties. Meaning provisions therein to take care of the runts beyond runthood. The judge needs to be removed from the bench.
Plus, Europe has Draconian immigration rules. Do you have any idea what it takes to emigrate to the Netherlands, for example? We already have trouble coming up with enough money to pay for basic services (the potholed streets of CA, for example.) And yet, people want the government to give every young person a $40,000 free education? Something will just work out to pay for it?
Karen – you don’t need money for streets in CA when you are going to have the bullet train to nowhere.
“Germany has demonstrated a great example of what should be done here.”
The flip side of Germany’s socialist funding of university educations is that Germany restricts enrollment to only about 10% of its young adults, as opposed to 44% in the US.
The few gain at the expense of the many, as is typical when socialism meets real the real world.
Mike Snow – if the logic of the court holds true, then the parents should sue her now to get an agreement in writing for an annuity in their golden years. Quid pro quo.
Brendan:
You are doing your child no favors if you’ve raised her to ignore your rules, never want to see you, but hold out her hand for your money.
Good parents will teach their children they can earn more privileges and a better life than they can get by breaking their rules.
Who’s the better parent, the one whose kid lives with his buddies, partying all day and night, going nowhere, but the parent pays his bills every day? Is that parent “there for their kid” or enabling their kid, rendering her unable to survive after her parents are gone? Or the parent who tells their kid they will pay 80% of a college or trade school, and the kid has to pay the last 20%. No college or trade school means no financial support.
It is a very slippery slope when a faceless government decides how to parent our children. They have no idea what individual situation each family faces. Some kids are hard partiers who need tough love. Some have had 3 kids by 3 different men by the time they’re 20. Some are really good, law-abiding kids. Every kid is different, and every family is different. Some parents are better than others, and some kids behave better than others.
The government should not insert itself between parents and their adult children.
Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” has some interesting views on College Education and why it may not be for every one. If you buy into his argument, and as a Machinist who works for a very good company earning in the low 6 figures annually, I do. Then a college education is not “necessary”. Desirable but not necessary. Keep in mind for the student who really desires a college education there are company sponsored tuition programs as well as Military options.
What I’d really like to know, since this decision was made by a non family member, possibly without regard for the financial situation of the parents, Will the child some day be responsible for supporting her parents when they can no longer work and their pensions are underfunded? Or does responsibility flow in only one direction? Will these parents one day be able to sue their child for support?
Mike Snow – you raise an interesting issue. Since the parents are forced to pay for the child’s college, is the child now legally obligated to support them in their dotage?
Glad you come from the land of all blue skies Brendan. It’s good that you have been fortunate enough to feel that way. I don’t think anyone wants the courts to have that type of authority to require such obligation of anyone. Just ask yourself, “what’s next…”
Talk about a slippery slope…
Well, family court matters are usually pretty much up to the judge, and there is not a lot of precedent that usually gets set by something like this. I doubt this translates into a universal right to tuition by grown-ups in New Jersey. However, it would be nice for a New Jersey domestic relations lawyer to weigh in on this.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – does NJ require it judges to go to law school or can just anyone run for judge?
The higher education industry has flourished since LBJ made student loans available to the masses. Too many kids go to college w/ no business being there. We have too many worthless college grads and too few tradesmen.
Were these parents still married, they would have no legal obligation to fund their daughter’s college costs. Why should a divorce obligate either of them to do something that continued marriage would not?
By the way, I just discovered your blog (through Transterrestrial Musings) and see that you’re going to represent the Congress in an upcoming lawsuit re: constitutional separation of powers. Thank you immensely and good luck with this. I will be following closely.
Absolute nonsense. Do parents with adult children have a legal duty to feed and house these people? If so, for how long? At what age can parents “retire” from paying for everything? And if not, then on what rational basis is there a duty to pay for a college education? If it’s that important she can get loans and pay for it herself. This will help to ensure that she learns something valuable at college. Success does NOT require a college degree and many college degrees are just social justice money-siphoning systems and the people obtaining them feel no responsibility to make sure they are learning something that will be financially useful to society in the future.
Two people decided to bring a third soul into the world and yet feel no obligation to ensure that the third soul, their own child, is a success.
Wonderful.
It strikes me as though they didn’t learn the most important lesson of being a parent: it’s not about you, it’s about the child that you chose to birth. It’s called love. And the Ricci/McGarvey parents, as well as some people on this board, should show some. While “Generally parents are not under a duty to support children after the age of majority” this applies only to a legal duty, not a moral one. Thankfully, this court adjudicated the parental moral obligation that Mr. Ricci and Ms. McGarvey should have otherwise felt and said “Your job as a parent doesn’t end at 18, it doesn’t end because your daughter didn’t play by your rules, your job as a parent requires that you do your best to ensure that your child is a fully functioning, productive member of society.” More to the point, and something that might resonate with the apparently right-leaning folks here: Why should their failure in the relationship with their child, burden the rest of society? Why should I, or any of you, pay for the filial Ricci’s struggles because, when she was even younger, her parents couldn’t figure out how to parent her in a loving, caring way? Or even love each other enough to stay together longer than 30 months?
I truly pity the people commenting here who apparently feel that the parental obligation ends at 18 and that somehow, the sink or swim approach to parenting is the right one. I thank God that I’m the child of two loving parents who I know, without a shadow of a doubt, are there for me, for anything I need to the extent that they can be — unconditionally — even at my “advanced” age of 47. I’m a success today because of that love, not in spite of it.
Since when is parenting a privilege as if it were something the state could bestow or take away like a driver’s license*? Humans, like other animals, in spite of what text books in Texas might say or imply, were having children long before any state ever existed. It is a universal right, like breathing air (at least until the giant multi-nationals start writing up legislation for their bi-partisan puppet scum to enact that will force us to purchase breathing rights from private profligate corporations like we are forced to do now with neoconservative Heritage Foundation->RomneyCare->ObamaCare health insurance – the only pure socialism I know of that worships profit and benefits ONLY private monopoly enterprise).
And also, who is the state to define what is good and bad parenting and whether or not higher education, or any other type of training, is a perpetual responsibility of the parent? If higher education, why not other obligations, such as a guaranteed job being president of one of the super corrupt banks where the CEO makes hundreds of millions in bonuses for laundering drug money for South American countries, or tricking poor people into taking loans and then kicking their families out into the streets and charging them perpetual servicing fees that they have to pay even decades later if they ever get a few dollars together.
Does this responsibility stop being active at the death of the parent or does it pass on to the children, so the child can sue himself or herself for unfulfilled obligations of the parent(s) and could the obligation even go on down to the children of the children and if so who exactly gets the payoff if there ever is one or if we all just go extinct due to decisions like this that are so utterly utterly screwed up?
I assume, of course, the real beneficiaries would ultimately be the local cops pulling people over on the highway to confiscate their property as – for them – it might mean the difference between meeting or missing the financial targets they set for their police department from fleecing sucker drivers the year before. It would be so
much more profitableepatriotic for them to have a back-up revenue stream.*In exceptional cases, I could see parental rights challenged in a court of law.
Doug Jones – “My parents helped me go to college. They packed up my shit in the car and took me to college. Good ghod we live in a nation of grifters and thieves.”
Yea, it’s all those smart liberals that issac wrote about. Wait a minute, or are they the stupid ones that Gruber talked about.
The Peoples Republic of New Jersey
Considering her history, who would hire Caitlyn Ricci after college?
She does seem litigious.