Court Opinion

ID: 9725984
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:25:46.007171+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:22.455068
License: Public Domain

FRIEDLANDER, Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I agree with the majority that the trial court erred in ordering Father to pay expenses incurred after June 29, 1999, that are properly designated as support payments. I also agree in general with the majority's determination that the trial court erred in ordering Father to contribute to all of Zachary's educational expenses, in light of Zachary's periodic poor academic performance in college. I respectfully disagree, however, with the majority's conclusions on the question of which semesters Father is responsible to fund.
*237The majority concludes that Father should not have to contribute for the semesters following a semester in which Zachary did not meet the required minimum grade point average, as determined by the dissolution court in the divorce decree. I believe that it is at odds with the order providing that Father and Mother should divide equally Zachary's tuition and book expenses so long as he maintains a "C" average. I believe the best interpretation of the support order is that Father is not financially responsible for semesters in which Zachary does less than "C" work. This necessarily means that the determination as to whether Father has to contribute will be made at the conclusion of the semester when Zachary's grades are posted. Inasmuch as college expenses are paid at the beginning of a semester, such would require something in the nature of reimbursement from Zachary to Father, if Zachary's performance did not fulfill the requirement concerning his GPA. The majority concludes that such is not feasible because it would place "unnee-essary pressure on a child to achieve." Op. at 283 n. 11. I assume that the majority uses the term "unnecessary" in this context not in the sense of "unwarranted," but of "overly" or "excessive." Clearly, such accountability places pressure on Zachary and others similarly situated, but I think it is overstating it to characterize it as "unnecessary pressure."
I begin by observing that, at present, there are no laws, state or federal, that generally require parents to pay for the children's college education. With one exception, such is a matter of the parent's prerogative. That exeeption applies here, and occurs with respect to child support in the context of dissolution of marriage. Ind.Code Ann. § 81-16-6-2(a) (West 1998) provides that a "child support order or an educational support order may also include, where appropriate ... (1) amounts for the child's education ... at institutions of higher learning[.]" Thus, but for the break-up of his parent's marriage, the question of whether Father and Mother would fund Zachary's college education would be left entirely to his parents' wishes. Had there been no divorce, Father and Mother might well have eut off funding for his college endeavors after the first or second bad semester. He would then have been in a position in which many others find themselves, viz., having to put himself through college.
I share the foregoing observations to lend some perspective to my point that we should not begin our analysis with the assumption that relying entirely on one's own resources, including student loans and working one's way through college, is an unacceptable situation that is to be avoided when fashioning support orders. It seems to me that this view is implicit in portions of the majority opinion. For instance, the majority states, "To completely cut off a child following a bad semester or a bad year is unnecessarily harsh[.]" Op. at 284-285. Elsewhere, and even more problematically, the majority states, "To have cut off his educational expenses after one or two bad semesters may have made it impossible for him to graduate." Id. at n. 13. Refusal to subsidize poor effort or performance, or both, does not strike me as harsh, much less unnecessarily so. Certainly, a lack of monetary contribution by parents does not render the attainment of a college education an impossible task. That said, the dissolution court in the instant case, did have the statutory authority to fashion an order requiring Mother and Father to contribute to Zachary's college ' education, and the court exercised that power.
*238The order called for Father to pay a share of Zachary's college expenses provided that he maintain a "C" average. That order could arguably be interpreted in several ways, but I have no quarrel with the one adopted by the dissolution court here, ie., that Father need not contribute for a semester in which Zachary's GPA was below a "C." In my view, taken literally, such would include any semester in which poor grades from that semester lowered the GPA below the threshold. Moreover, if the next semester's performance raised the GPA above the threshold, then Father should contribute for that semester, notwithstanding that his obligation to do so would not be determined until the grades were posted and the semester completed. The majority addresses the practical difficulties inherent in that system, and attempts to resolve them by, in effect, injecting what amounts to a one-semester delay into the formula. In my view, the majority thereby alters the support order it seeks to construe and implement.
That alteration is not without consequences. The total cost for tuition and fees changes from one semester to the next, though perhaps not dramatically so. Still, the fact that semesters are not interchangeable in that respect counsels against the sort of approach adopted by the majority in this case. Accounting difficulties may arise from strict adherence to the original support order, but from Zachary's perspective that is just another unpleasant consequence of a sub-par academic performance.
In summary, I1 would impose the terms of the original order exactly as written, and would not add to its terms a one-semester delay. The majority's addition of that term to the order is not justified, whether it is motivated by a desire to avoid accounting difficulties, or by what I considered to be the mistaken view that ordering an under-performing student to pay his own way through college is too harsh to contemplate, and that such could render the attainment of a degree impossible. The dissolution court is certainly capable of performing the necessary calculations to determine the amount Father owes under my interpretation of the terms of the order to pay college expenses. I would remand with instructions that it do so. In all other respects, I agree with the majority.