Today, we are discussing the subject of paying for college for children after a West Virginia divorce is over. Let’s say the person has a child who’s over age 18 and they are getting ready to go off to college. How is this going to be paid for? That’s a common question I get and it really depends on whether there’s an agreement or whether there is not an agreement between you and your ex. When it comes to an agreement, I have routinely seen property settlement agreements that are adopted by the court that require one person or another to pay for college education. I’ve seen those property settlement agreements accepted by the court.
Let’s say that you and your spouse come to an agreement on how it’s going to be paid for. It might be based on some sort of formula that you work out. Let’s say one person is going to cover 70% of the costs and the other person’s going to cover 30 or maybe one person who’s going to cover all of the costs associated with a college education or a four year degree. In those instances, the courts I’ve seen routinely go along with whatever the agreements are. That’s something to keep in mind. If you could agree to it, there’s a very high likelihood that the court is going to accept it. Now, when it comes to a situation where let’s say that the two people are not in agreement over how to pay for college, this becomes much more problematic and tricky.
The bottom line is nobody can really be forced to pay for a college education. I do not personally believe that it’s authorized based on the law. If who pays for college is something that’s very important to you, then it’s something that you’ve got to factor into whether you want to try to reach an agreement or not. Let’s say that you’re one person and you want to pay for it all, but you want the other person not to take as much alimony or let’s say you’re the other person and you want the other person to totally pay for the children’s college education. In this case, then you’re going to have to probably negotiate over some other things. At this point, you’re going to have to have it in writing and accepted by the court. This pretty much sums up paying for your kid’s college education after your West Virginia divorce and how the court is going to treat this matter.
