mr roboto said:
Once a kid graduates HS the parent has no obligation to continue to support them. Most choose to help partly out of love and partly to try to make sure the kid won't have to come back and live at home.
There's a difference between a natural obligation and a legal obligation. The original questioner suggested that legal obligation wasn't important to this discussion. I think we all agree we have some kind of obligations to our family, whatever our or their ages.
Agreed.
So there is a natural obligation, and new Jersey law makes it a legal obligation. Sounds like a clear issue.
A legal obligation is ridiculous - hopefully the case is tossed so no precedent is set... The backlog of 18 year olds suing parents would clog the system.A parent should help their children out, but not bc of legal obligations. If they don't want to, that is their choice and there are prob other issues... If these are factors that don't involve criminality, there is no reason at all for the government to intervene.
So you can think of no scenario where the actions of the parents would create a legal obligation for them to pay their kid's college?
Say the kid wanted to be a mechanic. So he gets a part time job at a garage when he turns 16 and enrolls in his school's vo-tech courses in that area. His boss says that if he puts in 2 years, passes all of his classes he will be hired full time when he graduates.
The parents find out and force him to quit job, join the debate club and enroll in college prep classes. He hates it but does what they say. At the same time they put away money for him to go to college and each month they show him the account balance to assure him they are serious. They also assure him that if he still wants to be a mechanic after he gets a degree he is free to do so because they are certain he will change his mind.
The kid goes to a graduation party, has a little too much to drink and ends up getting a DUI. The parents are so mad they tell him to never come home and they take the college fund and blow it on a world cruise. After all, he is 18, has a HS diploma and they have no further obligations. Do you really think a court shouldn't enforce the agreement the parties had under these circumstances?