TRADITIONALLY, a family's legal responsibility for child support used to end at age 18. Starting Oct. 1, however, Connecticut will join a nationwide trend -- already occurring in 23 other states -- of courts deciding to include college expenses in setting child-support payments in divorce cases ("States split on asking divorced parents to pay for children's tuition," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 16). Connecticut and the other 23 states it joins are entirely correct, and the sooner this Commonwealth joins them, the better.
College tuition must be included in child support payments in order to guarantee that children of divorced parents can afford higher education. College is more important than ever before getting a good job. Gone are the days when college was just for the rich or the very smart. A college education is now seen as a requirement for many jobs, and it is unfair that children of divorced parents would not be able to attend because they only have one parent contributing.
John P. Vincent, psychology professor at the University of Houston told the Chronicle, "college is now -- and has been -- not a luxury but a necessity to enter the work force. These kinds of laws address that. They make good social-policy sense."
College tuition is often one of the largest investments outside a home that a family can make. It is not fair for the parent who is not raising the children to only have to pay for expenses up to the end of high school. While food and clothing are not cheap, it is ludicrous to think that only one spouse should pay college tuition, which at many private schools eclipses $30,000 a year once room, board and living expenses are included.
Academia is partly responsible for the new law in Connecticut, according to the Chronicle. Connecticut State Rep. Art J. Feltman, a lead proponent of the bill, became interested in the issue after reading "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25-Year Landmark Study" by Judith S. Wallerstein, a senior lecturer emerita at the University of California Berkeley. In her book, Wallerstein found that 80 percent of children in intact families get parental support for college expenses, while only 29 percent of children of families with divorced parents get the same support.
In an effort to make sure that the parent making the child support payments -- usually the father -- does not have an undue burden, Connecticut law has two restrictions. The parent with custody must prove that divorce is the sole factor affecting his or her ability to pay for college expenses. There is also a cap on the money which the parent without custody has to pay. In Connecticut, this sum caps out at the total expenses for an in-state student at the University of Connecticut, which is $13,363.
Although these restrictions were meant to protect the parent who does not have custody from being burdened with excessive expenses, they leave something to be desired. It is very difficult for a court to determine whether the divorce is the only factor affecting a parent's ability to send her child to college. Connecticut State Rep. Christopher R. Stone admitted to the Chronicle that the younger the children are at the time of the divorce, the harder it is for the parent with custody to prove that they would have gone to college.
The cap on the amount of money the parent without custody must pay hurts the child as well. If a child of divorce gets into the University of Connecticut as well as a private school in Connecticut -- Yale, for example -- where should the child go? Assuming that the child cannot get financial aid, such as grants which often happens in middle class families because they make too much money, the child would have to sacrifice an Ivy League education, or take out significant student loans. While many students face similar problems, children of divorce, according to the Wallerstein book, are less likely to get any sort of financial support from their parents, which only compounds the negative situation that they find themselves in.
According to the Chronicle, critics of the law point out that there is no requirement for married parents to pay for college. But according to Wallerstein's book, parents who stay married are much more likely to help pay for their children to attend college. The law is not trying to hurt people who pay child-support, but rather to help their children.
Not surprisingly, Virginia is not one of the 24 states that allow for college tuition to be included in setting child-support payments. Virginia, which is in no danger of being accused of acting as a trailblazer in social reform, should join the 24 other states. Divorce rates and the need for a college education are two things which have skyrocketed in the last 50 years. Let's not let one affect the other.
(Harris Freier's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at hfreier@cavalierdaily.com.)
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