Divorced parents may be required to pay for college
March 8, 2012
South Carolina: The South Carolina Supreme Court issued a ruling that may require divorced parents to pay for the college education of their children. Justice Kaye Hearn wrote in her ruling that "[a]lthough the decision to send a child to college may be a personal one, it is not one we wish to foreclose to a child simply because his parents are divorced".[1]
The case in question involved the divorced parents of a young man living with his mother who wanted to go to college. Neither he nor his mother could afford college without the aid of his father, who had been making weekly child support payments. The father agreed via an email to help with college costs, but failed to keep to his word. When the mother took him to Family Court, that judge ruled in the father's favor along with reducing the amount of his weekly child support payments. When the Supreme Court took up the case, they reversed the earlier ruling.
The ruling was 3 - 2, with Justice Donald Beatty writing the dissent. He cautioned against legislating from the bench, saying that "had the Legislature intended for a parent to pay college expenses as an incident of continuing child support, I believe it would have specifically included the phrase 'college graduation'".[1]
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