NJ teen loses first legal battle to make parents pay for education

Started by garbon, March 05, 2014, 07:38:13 AM

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MadImmortalMan

Laws can change. What's the parents' actual responsibility irrespective of law? What do you owe the kid just because you did them the disservice of bringing them into this awful world?
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Valmy

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on March 05, 2014, 10:30:07 PM
Laws can change. What's the parents' actual responsibility irrespective of law? What do you owe the kid just because you did them the disservice of bringing them into this awful world?

I see trees of green,
red roses too.
I see them bloom,
for me and you.
And I think to myself,
what an awful world.
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The Brain

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on March 05, 2014, 10:30:07 PM
Laws can change. What's the parents' actual responsibility irrespective of law? What do you owe the kid just because you did them the disservice of bringing them into this awful world?

I don't plan to bring my kids into NJ.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Jacob

I'm with Malthus and CC. I can't conceive of a scenario where enforcing "my house, my rules" would be higher priority than ensuring my child's education.

Eddie Teach

Private schooling only serves to further the sense of entitlement that obviously this kid has in spades.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

Malthus

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on March 05, 2014, 10:30:07 PM
Laws can change. What's the parents' actual responsibility irrespective of law? What do you owe the kid just because you did them the disservice of bringing them into this awful world?

My opinion? Parents are morally (again, I make no comments on the legality) obliged to do the best that they can to further the best interests of their children. I approve of parents who attempt to live by this, and dissaprove of parents who don't.

Now, I readily admit that the "best interests of the child" are not furthered by simply giving the child everything that they want, and that confrontations with one's children - over discipline, over lifestyle, over opinions - are inevitable. In many cases, the parent has to withhold things from the child, for that child's own good.

That said, in this case, according to the article in the OP, the parents of an adult child are claiming (admittedly through their lawyer) that if the adult kid simply comes home and obeys their rules, all will be foregiven and they will pay for her schooling. So them not paying for schooling isn't about the schooling, it is about her disobedience. They have set up a conflict of wills, in which she gets the education that her parents apparently otherwise feel appropriate if and only if she knuckles under to them.

I simply cannot accept that this is truly "in the best interests of the child". It looks more to me like a contest of pride and spite. No doubt teenagers can be plenty prideful and spiteful - having been one, I look back and cringe  ;) - but parents are allegedly supposed to be more mature than that.

If this was over a vacation, or a toy, or something of that sort, it would be no biggie - maybe the kid would be better off having perks taken away, maybe that would really be "in her best interests". But it is over her education, which strikes me as fundamentally different. One's education in HS affects one's future chances. Her parents are setting it up so that the kid's future chances depend on the kid's pride breaking, which is just plain foolish.   
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Berkut

Quote from: Jacob on March 06, 2014, 01:10:32 AM
I'm with Malthus and CC. I can't conceive of a scenario where enforcing "my house, my rules" would be higher priority than ensuring my child's education.

I agree, but of course that is an observation about the choices the parents have made in how they raise their child, not an observation about the legal ramifications of those choices.

I think the parents are making some poor decisions, but that doesn't make them decisions that the legal system should have a say in...
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Jacob

Quote from: Berkut on March 06, 2014, 10:07:43 AMI agree, but of course that is an observation about the choices the parents have made in how they raise their child, not an observation about the legal ramifications of those choices.

I think the parents are making some poor decisions, but that doesn't make them decisions that the legal system should have a say in...

Yeah, I don't have a strong opinion on how the legal system should handle this; I'm commenting primarily on the parenting priorities.

Ed Anger

Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive

11B4V

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"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

Jacob

Quote from: Ed Anger on March 06, 2014, 10:43:02 AM
More spankings.

I believe that at 18 that would be considered assault, unless the daughter consents.

Ed Anger

Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive

11B4V

"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

11B4V

Quote from: Jacob on March 06, 2014, 01:10:32 AM
I'm with Malthus and CC. I can't conceive of a scenario where enforcing "my house, my rules" would be higher priority than ensuring my child's education.

You will do well raising teenagers.
"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".