Truly Loco Parentis
Hans Bader is on the case again at examiner.com about various states trying to force divorced parents to pay for their adult children -- when married parents have no such obligation:
The U.S. Supreme Court has never decided whether it is constitutional...18 views...I and legal commentator Walter Olson earlier noted that such laws have unforeseen bad consequences, such as (1) forcing parents to support children who are disrespectful and abusive toward them, and whom they have no parental control over, or -- in some states -- (2) forcing parents to make payments to their ex-spouse who was once the custodial parent, rather than directly to their child or the child's college, thus actually reducing the child's ability to attend college, by reducing the non-custodial parent's ability to directly pay for the child's college tuition.
...I oppose such college child-support mandates partly based on my experience as a lawyer. (I should note, by the way, that I am not divorced, and have no child support obligations). As an intake lawyer for a non-profit law firm for several years, I saw cases of aging divorced parents forced to pay the college bills of disrespectful, ungrateful offspring with whom they had an acrimonious relationship, even though they could ill-afford to do so - like a father dying of an incurable liver disease forced to pay his estranged daughter's graduate school expenses, under a state law permitting child support to be awarded for adult children. (We did not handle family-law cases in state court and I thus had no choice but to reject these people's urgent pleas for legal assistance).
Divorced parents, like married parents, should have the right not to pay for their adult children's living expenses or college costs -- for example, if the child engages in conduct or a field of study that is wasteful or objectionable to the parent.
It is likely that courts will apply this bill (if it becomes law and is not overturned by the courts) to impose support obligations even when doing so is very burdensome and unfair to aging parents. Courts often award support reflexively even when doing so is unjust.
