The College Fix

New Jersey discriminates against divorced when it comes to tuition obligation, parents say

A New Jersey student is suing her divorced parents because they refuse to fund her education at the college of her choice, citing New Jersey’s curious legal precedents.

Her case has drawn so much attention that it has prompted legislation to preempt future litigation – and under a ruling Monday, the dispute could drag on another year.

Caitlyn Ricci, who is 21, started attending Temple University in nearby Philadelphia this fall. Its out-of-state tuition runs $25,622 per year and doesn’t include room and board.

On Monday afternoon, Superior Court Judge Donald Stein in Camden County denied Ricci’s request to fine her parents $100 a day for refusing to pay her Temple tuition, and forwarded the dispute to New Jersey appellate court, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The judge ruled on Halloween that Michael Ricci and Maura McGarvey must pay $16,000 per year to help Caitlyn with her tuition. Another judge, Thomas Shusted, ruled earlier this month that the parents must pay their daughter’s outstanding $906 tuition payment at Rowan College at Gloucester County, which she attended prior to Temple, the Inquirer said.

“I’m not going to pay. I’m not going to give them any money until my daughter has a relationship with me and we start to heal our family,” Michael Ricci told ABC 7 Chicago after the hearing before Shusted.

Andrew Rochester, the student’s attorney, said his client’s parents are financially able to pay $16,000 a year and were offered “options not to pay cash out of hand” but refused, according to the South Jersey Times.

Caitlyn Ricci has not lived with her parents since early 2013, the Times said. She went to live with McGarvey after a drinking infraction that prematurely ended an internship, but refused to live by her mother’s rules, including a strict curfew. Her paternal grandparents took her in and have been paying her legal bills.

Spills onto parenting website, fundraising campaign

The legal dispute has even spilled onto Yahoo Parenting, where Michael Ricci wrote a first-person account of his family struggles – and where his daughter’s attorney posted a response.

“My ex and I have five kids between us, a mortgage, and other expenses. Why don’t they take any of that into account?” Ricci wrote.

Rochester shot back: “She is a solid A/B college student and works a 30 hour job” now that Caitlyn Ricci lives with her grandparents. “Mr. Ricci should be proud of her accomplishments instead of disparaging [her] because he doesn’t want to pay for her education.”

McGarvey also set up a fundraising page at GoFundMe to help cover her legal bills and explain her side of the story.

When Rochester claimed that Caitlyn’s parents had incomes sufficient to pay for their daughter’s Temple tuition, he was referring to “the income of two separate households, mine and my husband’s plus my ex-husband’s and his wife’s” – four adults, five minors and two mortgages, McGarvey wrote. She personally has “more debts than assets.”

“I worry about what to tell my two young sons,” McGarvey continued. “Will they get the message that when they are 18 or 19, they can move out, refuse to follow any of my rules, have no relationship with me, and still expect me to support them financially?

Caitlyn Ricci told the judge she loves her parents but does not think that they understand how important education is to her, according to ABC 7 Chicago.

Legislation to protect parents ‘in agreement’ on child’s education

Andrew Smith, who represents Michael Ricci, said Caitlyn’s parents are being treated unfairly because they are divorced, according to the Times: Parents who are married have never been ordered to “contribute” to their children’s education.

The rulings are based on a 1982 decision “in which a court ruled that a set of divorced parents were obligated to pay for a child’s college education,” the Times said. Smith said that case differed because it involved an “estranged parent” and a child who was a “victim” of the divorce.

Assemblyman Christopher Brown, a Republican, is working on legislation that would not let adult children sue their parents for tuition when those parents “are in agreement on the matter.”

In a press release posted on McGarvey’s personal blog, “The Age of Entitlement,” Brown said his legislation “will allow parents to more independently determine their financial responsibility for their child’s educational experience, based on the family’s best interest instead of judge’s ruling.”

College Fix reporter Samantha Watkins is a student at Point Loma Nazarene University.

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