College Costs and Child Support Part 1

{3:24 minutes to read}  In my last post, I suggested that parents should mediate their divorce, and especially child support, in order to control if and how they would pay college costs for their children. In this article, I will discuss how the court system in New York has handled the interplay between college costs and child support.

The first step is for a court to determine if the non-custodial parent should receive a credit at all.

•If a child is living at home with the custodial parent while attending college, it is unlikely that a court will reduce the child support the non-custodial parent is paying;

•Even if a child is living away at college, the non-custodial parent would not receive a child support credit if he/she is not contributing toward the college expenses;

•However, if a child is living away at college, and the non-custodial parent is paying a portion of the room and board expenses, the general rule is that the parent paying child support would receive a “credit” toward his/her child support obligation.

If the court decides that the non-custodial parent’s child support should be reduced, the next step is for the court to determine how much of a credit he/she should receive.

The general rule is that the non-custodial parent would receive a credit against his/her child support obligation based on the room and board portion of the college costs. However, there are some limitations to that rule.

If there are children remaining in the home, the reduction in child support for the child in college cannot reduce the support allotted to the children back home.

For example, if there are two children in the home and the child support is $2,500 per month, representing 25% of the non-custodial parent’s income, the child support for one child is 17% of the non-custodial parent’s income, or $1,700 per month.  

Therefore, if the “college credit” is more than $800 per month, leaving less than $1,700 available for the second child, it is unlikely that a court will reduce the child support below $1,700, since doing so would mean that the younger child would not be receiving his/her share of the non-custodial parent’s support.

In that case, a court is likely to limit the “college credit” to the amount of child support paid on behalf of the child attending college. However, even limiting the reduction to this amount is probably unfair to the custodial parent.

In my next post, I will discuss why I believe this might be unfair and how parents can provide some relief to the non-custodial parent while still honoring the needs of the custodial parent.