What’s a child to do?

According to this article, a child sued her father for the payment of her college tuition and related expenses. After the two day trial, the judge found in favor of the child and awarded her $47,000, which included the tuition cost and counsel fees. I am often asked about a parent’s obligation to pay for a child’s college eduction in Pennsylvania. The information I tell these people is usually not well received.

In the Pennsylvania case of Blue v. Blue, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court determined that a parent does not have the obligation to provide financial support for a child beyond the later of that child’s 18th birthday or graduation from high school. This meant that a parent could not be forced to contribute to his or her child’s college tuition or other related expenses. In so doing, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed about 30 years of case law holding that there was never any provision in the law that obligated a parent to pay for college expenses.

The legislature attempted to rectify this problem by passing what became 23 Pa.C.S. 4327 which obligated divorced, separated, or unmarried parents to pay for the college expenses for their children. In the Supreme Court decision of Curtis v. Kline, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that this statute violated Pennsylvania’s Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides every person should be treated equally under the law. Since the statue treated children differently depending upon the marital status of their parents (this statute did not apply if the parents of the children were married to each other), it was declared unconstitutional and can not be enforced in Pennsylvania.

So, does this mean that Dana Soderberg’s case against her father (those are the parties in the article) can not happen in Pennsylvania? In Pennsylvania, if a parent agrees, preferably in writing, to pay for a child’s college education (in full or in part), the court will enforce that agreement. Usually, the parties to such an agreement are the two parents. In this case, it appears that Dana may have been a party to the agreement.

The advise I give my clients who ask about their obligation to pay for a child’s education is as follows: Pay it because you want to provide for your child’s education. Don’t do it only because there is a piece of paper that says you have to do it.