22 Is the New 18

The media has lit up about a New Jersey court’s decision to order the divorced parents to pay $16,000 per year for the college education at Temple of their estranged daughter, Caitlyn Ricci.  To family lawyers, this is not a surprising result.  I have written about the equal protection and other issues inherent to treating married parents (who are never required to pay for their kids’ college education) differently from unmarried or divorced parents (who may be required to pay for their kids’ college education), but the minority of states with postsecondary educational support laws have pointed to findings that divorced and nonmarital parents are far less likely to pay for college.  Lawmakers and courts in these states have seized the opportunity to level the field by requiring unmarried parents to be liable for college support.  Perhaps in these states, the cost-of-raising-a-child estimates should be revised from low six figures to something a bit higher to avoid a shock to parents—more of whom are implicated as the numbers of divorces and out-of-wedlock births continue to climb.