Who pays for college after divorce is one of the few questions in Maryland family law where the court has no answer for you.
A judge cannot order you or your co-parent to contribute to tuition. Child support ends at 18, or at 19 if your child is still in high school, and after that the only thing creating an obligation is what the two of you agreed to in writing during your divorce. That makes your settlement agreement the entire mechanism — and in our experience, most are drafted without anyone looking at how financial aid actually works.
This post covers what changed, what it means for your agreement, and what to decide now.
Two Households Usually Doesn’t Mean More Aid
The intuition is reasonable: the household split, income dropped, so aid should rise. It often doesn’t work that way. Aid formulas look at a specific parent’s finances, not the combined picture of both homes — and depending on which parent the formula lands on, a separated family can end up with an aid result no better than when they were married, and sometimes worse.
The FAFSA Rule That Changed
This is the one most divorced parents get wrong.
The FAFSA used to follow the custodial parent — the one the child lived with most. It no longer does. Under current rules, the parent who must file is the one who provided the greater share of the child’s financial support over the prior 12 months. If the two are equal, it falls to the higher-income parent.
The practical consequence catches people off guard: a parent can have primary physical custody and still not be the parent who files. If your divorce was finalized years ago under the old rule, your assumption about who handles the FAFSA may simply be wrong now.
Remarriage Puts a New Spouse on the Form
If the filing parent has remarried, the stepparent’s income and assets are included in the calculation. A prenuptial agreement does not change that — a prenup governs what happens between spouses, not how a federal aid formula reads a household.
The Sibling Discount Is Gone
Parents often plan around having two children in college at the same time. That benefit no longer works the way it used to. If your financial plan assumes overlapping college years will reduce what you owe, it needs revisiting.
The CSS Profile Is a Separate Problem
Many private colleges also require the CSS Profile, and a surprising number of families don’t know it exists until they hit it. Private institutions set their own rules — and some of them want financial information from the parent who isn’t filing the FAFSA.
For a cooperative co-parent, that’s paperwork. For an uncooperative one, or a parent who isn’t in the picture at all, it can become a real obstacle. For blended families with two stepparents and other children in the mix, it gets more complicated still.
Decisions You Make Now That Change the Aid Picture Later
Several ordinary divorce decisions reach forward into the aid calculation:
- Who keeps the house, and how equity is handled
- How assets are titled after the split
- Who claims the child as a dependent on taxes
- Who owns the 529, who controls withdrawals, and what happens if that parent spends the money on something else
The 529 is worth particular attention. Ownership affects the aid calculation, and we’ve seen agreements that name an owner without ever addressing control, contributions, or what happens when the account is drained for something other than tuition.
What Decides Who Pays for College After Divorce: Your Provision
Because a Maryland court can’t order contribution for an adult child, the provision you negotiate is a contract that has to hold up years later, under circumstances nobody can predict today. The ones that work tend to answer these questions:
- What counts as a “college expense”? Tuition only, or room, board, books, fees, travel home?
- Is there a cap? Often the in-state rate at a Maryland public university, which gives both parents a known ceiling.
- What if the plan changes? A gap year, a transfer, part-time enrollment, a fifth year.
- Who applies for aid, and who shares financial information? Since the FAFSA may now depend on the other parent’s cooperation, silence here is a problem.
Start the Conversation Before You Sign
If your child is 10, 12, or 14, who pays for college after divorce is still a negotiable question rather than a settled one — which is exactly the window where decisions are cheap and options are open. Once the agreement is signed, they narrow considerably.
We help families build college provisions that are specific enough to survive the years between signing and move-in day, and we mediate these conversations when parents want to resolve them without litigating. Our mediation is fully virtual, so you don’t have to be local to work with us, and our flat-fee packages mean you’ll know the cost up front.
Schedule a consultation to talk through what belongs in yours.