Family Feuds·
THE COLLEGE STANDOFF
A divorced parent fights over who funds their kids' college after they bypass free options, with shifting promises, boundaries, and a stubborn stance that threatens family peace.
Should the poster pay, or hold the line?
Be one of the first to vote.
The fight wasn't over whether the kids could go to college. It was over who would pay for the schools they wanted instead of the ones they could get for free.
Both children were already in college, and the poster had a teaching job that came with a huge perk: the kids could attend the poster's private college, listed as "$55k plus tuition," for free, or go to one of the exchange colleges for close to nothing. But neither kid wanted any of the schools on that list. Not the exchange options. Not the poster's own college.
Then the ex-wife stepped in with a new plan.
She told the poster that it would be fair to pay the cost of a state college, about $30,000 per kid, including tuition, room, and board. The catch was that the kids could live at home if they attended there, which made the offer even more specific: the family was now talking about a bill of $30,000 per child, split between the parents. That would mean $30,000 from the poster and $30,000 from the ex-wife.
The poster immediately saw the math and hated it. Thirty thousand dollars was more than a third of the annual salary. And the poster pointed out something important: the teaching job had been kept, in part, for the tuition benefit. The point of staying in that job had been to make college cheaper for the kids, not to turn around and write a check for the full price of a state school they had bypassed.
But the ex-wife had already told the kids this was settled.
According to the poster, she told them the poster would pay "whatever you decide to pay" and that she would "somehow take care of the rest." The poster read that as a promise that the parents would split the cost, even though the ex-wife makes less money. The problem is that the poster does not want to pay any of it. The kids had options. They could have attended the free schools. They chose not to.
The poster also doesn't want to meet in the middle with a smaller contribution. A $5,000-per-kid-per-year offer feels too generous for a school that was already available at no cost. At the same time, the poster says, "I'm not a total dick," but also doesn't want to be on the hook for a third of a salary for children who turned down the benefits already on the table.
So the question lands in the middle of a family standoff: should the poster pay nothing, pay part, or accept the ex-wife's version of what was already decided? The poster calls themselves "the asshole" and worries they might just be "a stingy jerk" trying to set boundaries.