A recent case decided by the Illinois Supreme Court is a cautionary tale as to why you should plan ahead for college expenses when you are going through a divorce. More frequently these days, couples are planning early for the massive undertaking of putting their kids through college. When a couple is divorcing, they should likewise plan for what’s to come, or risk not receiving support for these expenses.
In this case, a couple had “reserved” the issue of college expenses in their divorce judgment. College seemed a long way off at the time, and so they put off the specifics of who would pay what, until some later time. They did not even state that either would in fact be responsible for them—just that they reserved the issue until a later time.
This is not uncommon to do; after all, each party’s financial circumstances can change drastically from the time the children are young, until it’s time to send them off to college. The problem here, was that the mom waited until one of her three children was finished with college, and one was currently enrolled, before she petitioned the court to have the dad share in the college costs.
Ordinarily the parties to a divorce may go into court later on and ask for some part of their arrangement to be modified if there has been a change in circumstances. But the law does not allow the change to be made regarding past obligations. So if you’re asking the court for more money to pay for expenses for the children, if you’re successful, you may get an increase in support going forward, not backward.
This mom wanted the college costs she had already paid to be shared by the dad. She did not feel that she should be limited to only future costs, because she did not believe she was asking for a modification at all. She was not asking for something to be changed, just to have the amounts set, and they had already agreed to determine college expenses later.
But in fact, the court said that their reservation of the college issue just gave the court permission to consider it later, but did not obligate either of them to pay any college costs. Therefore, when the mom went to court later to ask for the dad to be obligated and pay, she was asking for a change in the circumstances, and so it could only be considered going forward.
So this mom was out the money she had already paid for her children’s tuition and room and board. Had she acted earlier, before the bills began, it may have been different.
But had she acted even earlier, at the time of the divorce itself, and made a specific provision for college costs being shared by both of them, there may have been a different result. In some cases, where there was agreement in the divorce that both would share in the responsibility for college expenses, then the later disagreement about amounts could be figured out. Instead this mom and dad just agreed to agree in the future, so no one was really on the hook for it.
Paying for college long after a divorce can definitely be a confusing issue to resolve. But one thing is clear. College tuition is extremely expensive. So it pays to be sure that if you are going through a divorce, you look all the way down that road, even if your children are very young at the time, and properly consider your options.
