A good number of the Morristown clients that we work with here at Levine and Levine have been paying child support for many years. If this is the case with you, and you have a child nearing the end of his or her high school career, you may be curious as to whether or not you’ll be required to pay more to help to cover the cost of his or her college education. While one can’t truly put a price on the value of a college degree, it is also well known that tuition can be very expensive. You may strongly wish that your child is able to go to college, yet that doesn’t make affording it any easier.
The Child Support Guidelines for the State of New Jersey have language within them that specifically addresses this question. They state that state guidelines do not apply when your child goes to college. The reason behind this is because much of what you are currently paying still applies to him or her even after he or she leaves. The payments that you were making had been to cover his or her food, room, and board. Those are needs that he or she has while in school. Thus, what you are paying will still be applied in those areas. To mandate that you pay more on top of that would place an added strain on you that intact families would not be expected to have to deal with.
Still, if you wish, you can find a way to work college tuition into your child support agreement. You and your spouse would simply need to modify your agreement to include it.
For more information on the progression of your kids’ child support needs, please browse through our site.
