Court Opinion

ID: 9696836
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:59:56.260568+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:26.975390
License: Public Domain

CIRILLO, President Judge,
concurring:
I write separately to respond to the majority’s footnote concerning estrangement as a potential factor in determining the obligation of a parent to provide post-minority support for college-bound offspring. This issue has never been directly addressed by this court. The majority finds on the record before us that this issue need not be addressed because the economic facts are dispositive. While I agree that appellant was able to show undue financial hardship sufficient to justify our reversal of the trial court’s support order for his nineteen year old son, I wish to go on record as supporting the inclusion of willful estrangement as a consideration in making such support awards.
*117Extending a duty of support beyond the age of majority is grounded in a recognition of the modern day importance of a college degree and a policy of judicial paternalism. This policy seeks to insure that children from broken homes are not arbitrarily denied an opportunity for such a degree because of the problems of their parents. All too often what parents would have done willingly had their relationship not deteriorated must, after the fact, be coerced for the benefit of their children. Emotionalism and bitterness displace reason, and it is indeed noble for us to step between warring parents to rescue their children’s dreams. However, while with one hand we support the modern family ideal of helping to prepare our children through higher education, when these same adult children have repudiated a parent and we force that parent to endorse such behavior, we take away from another family ideal of even longer standing with the other: respect for one’s parents. Since the strong policy of this Commonwealth is to support the family, we cannot abdicate our responsibility to promote the values inherent in that relationship. One of the primary values is basic respect for one’s parents; another is the value of purposeful interaction to meet the needs of each family member. To order support where an adult child is willfully estranged from a parent is to judicially endorse that kind of behavior and to fail to recognize that, in all families, communication is basic to the ability to work through difficulties and reach compromise, if not harmony and understanding.
The two-tiered test used in this Commonwealth to determine the propriety of a post-majority support award for an adult child wishing to pursue post-secondary education purports to consider only the desire and ability of the child to do college work and the financial ability of the parents to contribute without undue hardship to that child’s expenses in obtaining a degree. I suggest that in examining the totality of the circumstances presented in each of these cases that come before us for review, we look to see whether the petitioning adult child has made the decision to disassociate him or herself from the parent from whom *118support is sought. Our court, in the exercise of our quasi-parental responsibility, should in such cases make it clear that such an adult child must accept the consequences of that decision and, as Judge Moss said in a 1980 Montgomery County case, “let the parties remain in the beds they have made for themselves.” Commonwealth ex rel. Wallace v. Simoes, 19 Pa.D. & C.3d 614 (1980).
It seems clear that refusal on the part of an adult child to associate with a parent should preclude that child’s ability to reach into that parent’s pocket for funds to attend college. It is most certainly an “undue hardship” to compound a parent’s loss of society, affection, respect and opportunity to guide by requiring a parent from whom an adult child is willfully estranged to support that child.
For the foregoing reasons I respectfully concur in the majority’s holding.