Court Opinion

ID: 9513350
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:34:33.827759+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:50.052916
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Chief Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
[¶ 28] I do not believe either statutory law or ease law supports the trial court’s Order that Kenneth pay one-half of BethAnn’s reasonable college education expenses, including books, tuition and housing incurred in pursuing a four-year degree... I therefore dissent to part VIII of the majority opinion. I concur in the remainder of the opinion.
[¶ 29] There is no evidence that the parties agreed to provide such support upon divorce. Surely the fact the parents established a college savings account is not, alone, evidence of such an agreement. If it is, it may well have a chilling effect on the establishment of future such accounts lest it be construed by a court as a nonretraetable obligation to furnish a college education to the children of the parties. While I hope divorced parents would continue to support their children in seeking college educations, that is a far cry from concluding a court can impose an obligation upon the parents to do so as a matter of law. There are parents who remain married who do not provide a college education for their children for a variety of reasons, not all of them financial. No one has yet, to my knowledge, held they are obliged to do so as a matter of law. I do not believe the child of a divorced parent has a greater legal right to that college education than a child whose parents remain married.
[¶ 30] In Freyer v. Freyer, 427 N.W.2d 348 (N.D.1988); we dealt with the anomaly of the child who reaches age 18 while still in high school. We affirmed an order continuing child support until the child graduated from high school, relying on a California decision, Rebensdorf v. Rebensdorf, 169 Cal.App.3d 138, 215 Cal.Rptr. 76 (1985), construing a statute similar to section 14-09-10, N.D.C.C., requiring parental support of a child “who is unable to maintain himself by work.” The California Court observed that under their statute, Section 206 of the California Civil *138Code: “The inability to maintain oneself by work need not be the result of a permanent condition_” 169 Cal.App.3d at 143, 215 Cal.Rptr. at 79. In Freyer, we observed that “a child who has reached age eighteen but is still in high school may, under appropriate circumstances, be considered unable to maintain himself by work.” Id. at 351. As footnote 3 in Freyer notes, many states have resolved the issue legislatively. That resolution is primarily to permit support until the child finishes high school.
[¶ 31] In 1989, in apparent response to Freyer, our Legislature enacted SB2356, 1989 N.D. Laws Ch. 180, which required support until “the end of the month during which the child is graduated firom high school or attains the age of nineteen years, whichever occurs first if the child “is enrolled and attending high school and is eighteen years of age prior to the date the child is expected to be graduated.... ” That section was subsequently codified as section 14-09-08.2(1), N.D.C.C. See Steffes v. Steffes, 560 N.W.2d 888 (N.D.1997).
[¶ 32] Subsection 4 of section 14-09-08.2, N.D.C.C., added, as the majority notes in 1993, contains indecisive language about what the preceding language in section 14-09-08.2, N.D.C.C., “does not preclude.” The legislative history concerning the purpose of the amendment is equally uninformative. Prior to this case, we have only had the opportunity to consider orders requiring child support during college as a result of a judgment entered upon stipulation of the parties. E.g., Steffes; Botner v. Botner, 545 N.W.2d 188 (N.D.1996). See also, Garbe v. Garbe, 467 N.W.2d 740 (1991) (educational •trust fund).
[¶ 33] If the Legislature intended section 14-09-08.2(4), N.D.C.C., to be an invitation to the courts to now require college education as part of a support order, that intent is not clear to me. I do not totally foreclose the authority to make such an order in the appropriate or rare case but this is not such a case.
[¶ 34] Although the majority opinion makes a valiant attempt to circumscribe the trial court’s “authority to award post-minority support to a child of a divorce,” relying on cases firom other jurisdictions, I believe the result leads us into a morass from which it will take years and many court decisions to emerge. Indeed, the Legislature determined it necessary to require child support guidelines to enable the courts to properly order support for minor children of a divorce. If they intended to authorize or require support for adult children of the divorce, I expect they would have done so in more direct and specific terms. The statutory provisions, as we have heretofore construed them, “are plain and concise limiting the support, maintenance, and education of the children to the period of their minority.” Roberta Jo W., v. Leroy W., 218 Wis.2d 225, 578 N.W.2d 185 (1998), quoting O’Neill v. O’Neill, 17 Wis.2d 406, 408, 117 N.W.2d 267 (1962). As a result, “any order awarding support money for an adult child in a divorce action would necessarily be extrajudicial, a nullity.” Id.
[¶ 35] If support for adult children in college is to be ordered, and I am not philosophically opposed to that prospect,-it ought to be under explicitly defined circumstances. If the authority is not explicitly defined, the issue will simply be another weapon to be used by one party against the other party in the divorce.
[¶ 36] Gerald W. VandeWalle, C.J.