Co-parenting when your kids are in college and beyond
Your younger child is graduating from high school this month, and he will be off to college in the fall. Your older one is graduating from college, and you’re preparing to help her move into her new apartment in Tucson where she’ll be starting a job soon. However, your and your co-parent’s joint responsibilities to your kids likely aren’t over yet.
You may be paying all or part of your new college student’s tuition, room and board and other living expenses. You may be helping your college grad out financially for awhile. Maybe you’re paying off her student loans or giving her a little money every month until she gets her apartment furnished. At least one, if not both of them, is still probably covered under your health insurance.
Suffice to say, you and your co-parent will still need to communicate regarding financial support for your kids for awhile. If you don’t already use a co-parenting app to help you track and manage payments and reimbursements, this can be a helpful tool. Now that your kids are away from home, you may want to give them access to it as well so that they can track money you’ve given or lent them and what they’ve paid back.
Co-parenting apps can be used to maintain shared family calendars and to communicate without having to talk on the phone, text or email. This can be convenient for working out when each of you will be visiting your kids (assuming you don’t want to do it at the same time), when your kids will be home and which parent they’ll be staying with.
Becoming an adult is an exciting and somewhat frightening time in everyone’s life. The last thing kids need to worry about is that their transition to college and beyond will bring about conflict between their divorced parents. You may need to update your parenting plan to provide guidance as you make these transitions. Your Arizona family law attorney can help you seek the necessary modifications.
Source: Our Family Wizard, “Supporting Adult Children as Co-Parents on OurFamilyWizard,” accessed May 15, 2018