Can an adult child sue a divorced parent?

[yoda]

Thats the crux of it really. We have just found out that our dsd, who is 18, is apparently going to try to take his dad to court to pay for his uni education. This, we suspect is not his decision, but his mums, as the child maintenance is due to run out next year.

Is this possible? We have a court order that says 'till he reaches 17 or the end of secondary education. It is dubious whether he qualifies for full time education anyway as he failed the first year and has restarted, with different subjects - but we pay so as to give him the best chance with his education. We also have a young son, so money is very tight for us as well.

Any thoughts

thoughts ??? who brought up such a selfish little cow.
Why is it her right to go to Uni, why is it her right for somebody else to pay for her education ?
She doesn't have a leg to stand on and needs reminding that plenty of kids don't get a penny from the absent parent and she should count herself lucky.

shame if it is the mother that she is willing to sour the relationship of father and dauther over money.

i think the daughter and father need some time alone to chat.

i am sure with your support there can be an amicable agreement in financial and emotional terms. where perhaps you an pay for some of it.

I think the parents' income is taken into account when the lea assesses grants, fees and loans..this now includes the birth parents and the main carer's new partner if he or she has one.So the system makes all these people responsible. I think the non resident parent can only avoid this responsibility if he or she is said to be permanently estranged from the child and risk would ensue if contact was made. I don't know what evidence is needed for this latter but if moeny has been paid up to now then it would appear that they are not estranged.

If the child started last year then I'm not sure whether the rules changed this year or last year and whether starting a new course makes a difference.

If his income is taken into account with the lea then that does not sound reasonable to expect a contribution from parent. Personally I do think parents should give some help to children at university whether that be in the form of a loan or annual gifts towards say books etc pans I dont mean that a parent(s) should fund a party lifestyle for their children but there are other ways to contribute.

where they are reasonably financially able to do so.

Hi,

Thanks for your replies. It's dh son not daughter - this is what happens when angry.

At present he is in doing his second year at college, but retaking year 1 of an A-level and started 2 A-levels afresh, plus retaking English GCSE again. Unfortunately he seems to suffer from 'lazyuitis' and all the other distraction problems of his age. To be fair he does seem to be making more of an effort this year, but i do not see why we should be paying for his lifestyle. Both my husband and i worked from 16 and paid our own way through college.

We know of the intention through a family friend who thought that we should know about this, as she thinks this is taking the p**s! Neither the ex nor our dss has mentioned anything.

I agree with the earlier posts about providing support if we can - however we are paying over £100/month more than the CSA would ask, as we didn't try and get it adjusted when our ds was born a couple of years ago. My dh is a good man and a good dad and we didn't want it to affect our sks in the mistaken idea that if we played straight the ex would have no comeback.

However it now looks like we have been naive and she is going to use dss to navigate around the consent order. I just can't believe that this can happen

thanks

I thought he was at university which is what I was referring to..

It does tend to be very late now when they are no longer your responsibility..dd1 is 23 and still has our income taken into account for her assessment for university. And we accommodate her when she is at home for the holidays.

I had read that this was possible - it was more in the context that this was the one time when the offspring could apply directly for maintenance rather than depending on CSA etc.

It could be one of those things that people say but never actually do, I don't know much about the legal system but I imagine that if she gets as far as taking legal advice on the matter it'll probably end there.

If your dss isn't likely to get into uni anyway then it's a bit of a non-issue, but if he does then could your dh make some kind of deal with him? For instance if your dss gets a part-time/holiday job now and saves a regular amount every month then your dh could agree to match the savings up to a certain level to pay for uni fees.

I don't know if it's the same in England but in Scotland parents' income is taken into account until the child is 25yo so your dss would definitely be entitled to financial aid from his father.

Also, imo, what you did when you were young isn't really relevant today - we live in a changing world.

just realised reading this back that in the holidays we accommodate dd1 sounds a bit strange..she is our daughter, well not dps but we don't discriminate, so she hasn't set up her own home yet so she comes home to the family and we enjoy her company. Her dad actually lives overseas but he still pays towards her keep as he does for dd2 and ds..even though the fact that he lives outside Europe would mean that he could easily avoid his parenting responsibility.

Dp has to fill in his deatils on the university grant/loan/fees forms although he doesn't have any children he is still legally expected to count as one of the family for making a contribution to the household.

The mum should really have made an appln for an extension of child maintenance before the order ran out, but for whatever reason she didn't, and you can't apply for an extension once the order's finished.

It's for that reason that the mum will have been advised to get the daughter to make an appln on her own behalf. The alternative is for the dad to keep paying child mtce until the end of tertiary education.

These quite rarely go to court, as usually the dad, however reluctantly, coughs up.

sorry, should have said stepson, I thought the op was talking about a stepdaughter.

TBH I think I would ring CSA and ask for re-assessment then perhaps you can save the difference in case you do end up paying in the future!

Ther is a legal right for an adult child of a divorced parent to recover university costs from the parent they do not live with and they often do take legal action for it. Anyway why isn't he funding it? If he couldn'g afford two families he shouldn't have taken up wirh someone else. If they'd have stayed together I bet he would have paid.

Of mother.. our court order says I have to pay for the children's tertiary education, not their father (as I earn more)