Court Opinion

ID: 9677259
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:47:44.647197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:54.826842
License: Public Domain

PREWITT, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the principal opinion, except as to the cost of the private schooling for the parties’ child. In Drury v. Racer, 17 S.W.3d 608 (Mo.App.2000), which appears to me to be the case upon which the majority rely, the child was not enrolled at a parochial school during the parties’ marriage. Shiflett v. Shiflett, 954 S.W.2d 489 (Mo.App.1997), which Drury appears to primarily rely on, involved college expenses, not a private elementary school that the child had been attending during the parties’ marriage.
The principal opinion here determines that Appellant’s point has no merit because “Wife has failed to prove that private schooling met any particular educational needs of her child,” citing Drury. I do not agree with the principal opinion or Drury that the proper test for determining whether a court should order private schooling over the wishes of one parent is when such schooling will meet the particular educational needs of the child. That may have been true under the circumstances in Drury and Shiflett, but that is not true here or in this District’s decision in In re Marriage of Manning, 871 S.W.2d 108 (Mo.App.1994).
I have every confidence that the public schools can provide the educational needs of most, if not any, child; however, as we noted in Manning, “Dissolution is difficult for a child. Not allowing the child to continue at the school she has been attending would make it more so. Allowing children to continue at a private school can be ‘a condition essential to the welfare of the [child]’.” Id at 111.
I do not see this as an issue of “particular educational needs,” but as one of making the dissolution trauma as minimal as possible for the child. I am a great believer in public education and think that in most circumstances a court should not order a party to pay all or part of the cost of private schooling over his or her wishes, except where the initial decision to send the child to private school was made by both parents. Also, in this case, I am not convinced that the financial circumstances of the parties would forego keeping the child in the school that she has always attended. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent in part.