Anonymous wrote:I have a friend divorcing with a seventeen year old. She is giving up a lot as her ex said he would pay for their only child for everything. Their child is 17 and will be going to college in a year.

Anonymous wrote:Yea, your problem is that no judge will force anyone to pay for a child’s college. So while negotiating to include it is always preferable, it’s not something that you can expect a judge to require unless both parties willingly agree to it.

Anonymous wrote:What advice would divorced people give to others in the middle of negotiating their agreements?

The biggest problem I've seen with people's settlement agreements, whether drafted by overpriced divorce attorneys or by free counselors and mediators, is that people fail to walk through each provision and think through how it would play out under various scenarios. Maybe the most common one involves paying for college. They fail to think about what will happen if one child turns out to be a genius and gets accepted to Yale for $90K/year. How will that be paid for? Are both parents required to fill out the CSS and FAFSA? The other one involves life insurance and pensions that are triggered decades in the future after all the assets have been divided, and after the almony and child support have ended and the two people may have each remarried a millionaire. Yet one spouse is stuck paying for life on a policy that the other spouse doesn't even need. And then there are the custody schedules. If your X moves to another state, who is responsible for paying for the travel and would the schedule stay the same? Maybe the biggest mistake I've seen is where a restriction is put in place for one parent but not the other. Everything should apply to both parties unless there is a real reason not to do so. You may think your spouse will never get a high paying job or marry a child molestor, but they could surprise you. Men need to include parameters on the XW allowing her boyfriends and next husband to have unsupervised access to both young girls and boys.

In VA, I've seen people include a clause saying that the agreement can't be modified. I think this should not be allowed, but it apparently is. Nobody should be stuck paying for something that is no longer necessary. I personally know someone who had a heart attack at 59 and whose doctor says they need to stop working but can't because he has to make a $10K alimony payment every month until he's 70 even though the ex inherited a ton of money from her parents (about $5M) after the divorce and she got more than half of their marital assets. Nobody should ever sign a no modification clause.

Yea, your problem is that no judge will force anyone to pay for a child’s college. So while negotiating to include it is always preferable, it’s not something that you can expect a judge to require unless both parties willingly agree to it.

Several states—including New Jersey, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut—may require divorced parents to contribute to college expenses, often determined by a judge based on financial means. Other states allowing such orders include Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa (recently restricted), Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Washington, and D.C

Anonymous wrote:Yea, your problem is that no judge will force anyone to pay for a child’s college. So while negotiating to include it is always preferable, it’s not something that you can expect a judge to require unless both parties willingly agree to it.