A Federal Referendum: Extending Child Support for Higher Education

Child support as a legal obligation has existed for decades. The principle underlying child support stems from the notion that parents’ financial obligation to their children should remain the same even if the parents’ relationship dissolves. The federal government mandated state acceptance of this principle when it required that states adopt guidelines and enforcement principles to ensure equal protection for children of non-intact families. The notable exception to this principle is parental contribution to higher education. Today, parents of intact families achieve extraordinary wealth transfer by providing higher education for their children. This transfer exists almost entirely outside of the traditional child support system. As a result, the equality principle on which child support is based fails to accommodate children of non-intact families in receiving higher education. The result proceeds in part from an arbitrary historical event—the lowering of the age of majority in response to a desire to enfranchise the troops fighting during the 1970s in the Vietnam War. Ironically, after the age of majority dropped, higher education was extended to a larger percentage of the population and the traditional family form changed, dramatically increasing the importance of child support. Ultimately, the