BellaOnline Forums Family Step Parenting College issue about stepdaughter

Hi to all again hope all is good. My question is, my step daughter is heading off for college this fall she will get financial aide she has applied for scholarships but we haven�t heard if she has received any yet, her father started an IRA when she was small and its worth about 8,000 his family has given her bonds through the years and they are worth right now about 7,000 I don�t think some are matured yet so could be more in the long run. My question is should her Father pay on her yearly tuition for whatever her financial aide, grants and schoalrships don�t cover?

As far as I know the mother hasn�t saved anything, plus his daughter and him don�t see eye to eye she only calls if she needs something(she is an only child.) I know its none of my business and I do stay out of his affairs with his daughter and his ex-wife and I hate the fact his daughter and him aren�t close or have much of a relationship but not much I can do, tried but I just gave up. Should he tell his daughter look I saved money for you for college, you have FA, grants the whole nine yards I�ll help you with books but the rest is up to you? Or pay the remainder of the yearly tuition and keep giving in to her cause he is afraid it might cause a fight with his ex and his daughter never speaking to him again? Either way this is a bad situation IMO, we want to teach our children responsibility and when your 18 the handouts are cut down a bit, yet some parents are in a trap and feel they have to do whatever it takes to keep their kids happy. Sometimes I feel what are we teaching our children when we don�t make a stand, its so easy to say yes but in the long run its not helping them at all to go out in the real world, saying no can be difficult for some and some kids just don�t know that word and that is sad, cause in the real world NO is a word we hear alot of.

I read this article and it made me think I am not sure what is right, I feel kids should take on some kind of financial rule while in college, if its working for school supplies etc. hey if they can buy beer, they can pay for used books and note books. The shame part is that is all her father is to her is a check book. I have girls and 1 will be heading off to college here in 3 years and her father and I, I think are gonna make her pay a bit of it herself, I don't think this will hurt her nor any other child. This can be a heated topic so I hope this does not bring out the claws. I think this is something all us parents need to think about cause college tuition just keeps going up like everything else and the economy is just so week and people today are barrowing from their 401k's, draining their savings, maxing out credit cards to just get by.

I absolutely agree that all kids should be responsible for a portion of earning their way through school, and while it is certainly the trend, I truly think all kids (this isn't necessarily just a stepparenting issue) and their parents need to think long and hard before getting tied up with loans for school that can act like an anchor around your neck for 30 years!

Dad may have some legal responsibility to daughter's education; he may also have some moral responsibility -- especially if he was specifically saving the money for her education. The best thing to do would be to talk to the daughter and find out what she thinks she will need. If she's choosing an extremely expensive school and could have gone cheaply or for free somewhere else, she should have to pay most of the difference, in my opinion.

My stepdaughter is headed off to college in the fall; we are doing what we can to help -- we paid the $500 deposit, we're planning to send her a bit of money each month, we're keeping her on our insurance -- but we sat down with her and did a financial plan, showing her how much it was going to cost because she's choosing to go to an expensive school. We showed her how much money she would have to earn each summer, and made it clear that while she would be welcome to live with us in the summers and on breaks and save money that she would be required to contribute (chores, family time) and that if her grades dropped and she lost her scholarship, she'd have to change her plans.

Communication -- as far as I am concerned, that is still the key to everything! Best of luck to you--feel free to get in touch if you need to talk more.

If my comments were inflammatory (which apparently they were because they were deleted) I apologize. Shadra's comments echo what I stated.

Please feel free to drop in to Colleges any time you need info on tuitin, fees, admissions, college life in general.

Thanks,

Lynn
Colleges Editor and Step-Child

linnea - I feel your dilema. My oldest SS is going off to college this fall. In his case he was a total jerk about filing out scholarships- (blew of the deadline for a $20K scholarship) and decided to go away to an expensive school for his freshman and sophmore years to be with a girlfriend instead of staying in town and utilizing our community college.

You have some money saved up so you and hubby will have to talk- maybe help her a little the first year or that last year when scholarships are running out? My husband was left DRAINED by a nasty divorce so our struggle is that dear stepson still feels like we should be able to pull money out of thin air because he buys his moms theories that everything is dad's fault.