Divorce Support Forums: COLLEGE, when does this end?

Sorry, I can't get past the fact that you seem intent on divorce if this financial issue odesn't work out ofr you. Do you love your husband that little? Do your kids' emotional states not mean anything to you? Is it all about money?

And the 18 year old being jealous of your oldest because the oldest made it impossible for her to be an only child? That makes no sense. It has to be some crazy person speculating or putting this nonsense into her her head... because she had a fine relationship with the kid till a year ago! Here's the thing, teens get bugs up their A$$es and get stupid from time to time. They get snotty & uppity & greedy & they want to control everyone. They think they're adults & want all the priveleges of an adult while taking on none of the responsibilities. They GRAB for the priveleges, going out & partying or whatever, at times, and then get all surprised when the consequences hit them in the face. College is one of those things. If someone gave her the idea that she didn't have to talk to you about it, but could still get funding from you for it, then that person was plain wrong. But if your husband walks into court without that iin his head, but instead with this threat hanging over him that his WIFE might take his three children and LEAVE him over this, then he's goign to show more intensity on this issue in court than it deserves and the judge might very well think he's being excessive and unreasonable (without the jduge knowing that it's because you are being unreasonable) and the jduge might go ahead & stretch teh law to fit this situation and GIVE the kid $$. It's not right, but your attitude is not fixing it.

Look, if the kid didn't speak to you for a whole year, then you both needed to do something about this well before now. She needed frequent visitation enforced, to come and if she was goign to be snotty & miserable, to sit in her room & mope if you didn't cowtow to her demands. And to come out & join the family again when she got over her teenaged mood. She needed to be disciplined for her snottiness & mean behavior towards her younger sibling, rather than have you jump in & get snotty back at her. The idea that you could all just allow her to pull away for a whole year, not do a thing about it other than wait till she's 18 and file to terminate the child support... well, it did this child a disservice & allowed her to enter adulthood with some very wrong ideas about how to handle her adult responsibilities... the decision about how to go about getting financing for college being just ONE of those wrong ideas.

Hopefully the judge will make the right decision in your husband & stepdaughter's case, but the more troublesome issue is if your own marriage is so troubled that this might break it up, you've got a whole lot more work, more therapy (sorry, it means spending more money on something that's not YOU or YOUR kids.. but rather your husband)... you've got a lot of work to go through to get over this. The idea that you coudl use the "d" word as some kind of threat involving money... it's not very well-thought-out and does not bode well for your marriage. Your husband must be frantic. And like I already said, the panic over whether or not you're going to leave him & strip the kids away from him as a result of this little hearing over whether or not he has to contribute a DIME to his oldest child's college... it's going to infect his ability to handle the case involving the college funding and make it more likely that he'll lose.

PLEASE think through the whole thing & recognize that thinking that divorce is a smart way to save money for yourself ... recognize that unless your husband is an unemployed gambler, that divorce is NOT a money-saving strategy.