This story from New Jersey is a little confusing. A judge has been called on to decide whether parents must continue financial support of a child of 18. What factors should we be considering? Is it enough for you--as it is for me--to know that she had left home? Should it matter that she was defiant of her parents' objection to a bad-apple boyfriend? Is it important that she wants to keep attending a private high school that costs $5,300 a year?
My parents were good enough to continue supporting me as long as I was in school, until I married. Pretty simple rules. We didn't have a lot of control battles about it, but I knew perfectly well that if I offended them deeply enough and undermined their faith in my judgment, they were free to cut me loose financially. I never lived at home after I turned 18, and always paid my own expenses when not attending school full-time. It seemed like a generous arrangement.
I have several relatives and acquaintances who've struck a very different deal with their adult children. It's very puzzling, and the children, far from feeling grateful, appear aggrieved: stuck in a long twilight of post-adolescence.
Anyway, if the courts have to be brought in to adjudicate a quarrel between parents and their children, that's a serious problem all by itself.
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From what I had read of the case, the only expense I could see the parents on the hook for was to pay the portion of the private school tuition they had previously contracted with the school to pay. If there was an early-out clause in the contract, then I think they should take it, but it sounded like they just chose not to pay. Other than that expense, I don't think the "child" (and I use the term very loosely here) didn't have a leg to stand on. Her lawyer was basing the claim to support on a nebulous concept of "sphere of influence". Which frankly, was broken when she left home in my opinion. But thankfully, it sounds like the judge in this case agreed with me.
My parents never kicked any of us kids out of the house. Generally, we lived at school when we went to college, and sometimes returned for summers where we were required to live by their rules (which included we had to have a job). Even as adult children just visiting, if you wanted to stay under their roof, you had to abide by their rules. For example, my brother who had been living with his fiance was pretty upset when he was told that they could not share a bedroom in my parents house as they were not yet married. Their house, their rules. And when I first brought my now wife home to visit, I was pulled aside and told pretty much the same thing, to which I told my father "No problem. Your house, your rules."
The fun turnabout was the first time my parents came to visit us (after we had been married) where I pulled my dad aside and said, "You know, neither of us were at your wedding, so we can't be sure you and mom were married. So unless you've got your marriage certificate on you, I'm afraid we're going to need to you stay in separate rooms." He took it with the humor it was intended.
Mike I would have loved to have pulled that on my parents! However, by the time MH and I got married and had the VES, snoring and restless leg syndrome had long separated them from sharing a single bed.
As for the young lady in the story, the judge's comments were a breath of fresh air coming from a judiciary that seems to be plodding along the nanny state path with direct and unwavering single-mindedness. Of course, after hearing the voice mails the young *lady* left for her parents after leaving, the judge was rightfully left with no other course of action than the one he chose. Not that that means much these days, but I'm still glad to see it.
Wisely, the court seems to have decided to refuse to intervene.
What really got me about that story was that her lawyer was a friends father. If I was her father, I want to have a word with that fellow.
She runs with quite a crowd.
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