Are we really setting up our society (or New Jersey's society, anyways) where children can sue their parents to support them through college, well past 18? That's a scary thought. I'm a parent and my kids are still quite young, but naturally I want to support them and help them with university when they get to that age. That's something quite different from being legally required to, however!
No, I don't think we as a society are heading in this direction. I think it's one example of a screwed-up family. It'd be unconstitutional to require parents to pay for college /support their adult children.
I am currently paying for my oldest's college education, and I have every intention of paying for my younger child too; however, I didn't just open up my bank account and say, "Take whatever you want." I would not be so willing to pay if my child wasn't working very hard towards a degree, or if she had insisted upon an expensive private school, or if she was just taking random classes and wasn't progressing towards a solid degree that'll get her a job.
Good add galliver. Another discussion that addresses aspects of both HIPAA and FERPA and how they can affect colleges (and students) is http://ispub.com/IJLHE/6/2/3751.
Yeah, I think all of us who are paying college tuition are a bit perturbed that on one hand the college wants our money, whereas on the other hand, they're not allowed to give us any information about what our babies are doing . . . unless the kids choose to give us information.
When my oldest was signing up for "all things college", we talked about that for about 30 seconds. I explained that we are happy-happy-happy to pay for her degree, but she WOULD give us access to her college records (which we can see online anytime), or we would reconsider our generosity. Either we're in this thing, or we're out -- it can't go both ways. She agreed that was reasonable, and we've had no conflict about it within our house.
The parents certainly are obligated to her high school to finish out the contract for the school year.
The parents have a right to establish household rules for children to follow. I didn't see in that article that they didn't want her to date a particular guy, so I am thinking you all saw it elsewhere. But, I think it is acceptable for parents to not allow their kid (person not out of high school) to date a particular person. If my child, while still in high school, tried to date someone committing illegal activity, I would forbid it.
I agree that the parents are going to have to pay for the current high school year.
They might be overly controlling parents who are trying to micromanage the girls' life . . . or they might have legitimate reasons to be concerned about a no-good or dangerous boyfriend whom she really should kick to the curb. We don't know.
I'm thinking a lot of this has to do with the boyfriend. In my years teaching high school, I've known a number of senior girls who wanted to move out of their parents' house so they could live with an older boyfriend (way too young for such a choice), and those girls tended to "invent" problems so they'd have an excuse to move out. These kids tend not to come from "white picket fence" families, but they're also not families who ought to be in court for the way they're treating their kids. Is this such a situation? I don't know, but experience makes me suspect it might be so.
Occasionally I've known about a friend's parents taking in "a poor abused or neglected child", only to find out that the real story was quite different. Again, I could easily believe that's the situation here.
Having said that, something I've heard of many times over the years: Parents with problem kids really get the bad end of things when their kids are 16 and 17 years old. If the kid leaves the house voluntarily and the parents report them to the police as "runaways", the police won't force the kids to come home. However, if the parents put the kid out of the house (even for good reasons; say, bringing drugs into the house), the parents can be brought to court for child abandonment. The real answer: You'd better teach your children well so they don't get into situations like this!